We started another sunny and cool morning in Lee Vining with a breakfast of yogurt on the deck of our hotel room. Soon afterwards, we packed up and set off toward Tioga Pass, backtracking through Yosemite National Park westward. Near the pass, we stopped to walk a lovely quarter-mile trail around a couple of small lakes. We had it to ourselves since it was only 6:30 a.m. We spotted a coyote a couple hundred feet from the trail and enjoyed the quiet morning.
Driving through Yosemite was easy, with very light traffic, although we did have a 15-minute wait on the road while a work party cleared some debris from downed trees. We drove through Fresno and then stopped for gasoline and lunch in an agricultural town named Sanger. We ate Mexican food from a food truck at the gas station, sitting on a picnic bench in the shade of an awning. It was hot there, probably in the high 80s.
We continued in to Kings Canyon National Park, where crowds were quite light. First we saw the General Grant Tree, a sequoia that is the third largest tree in the world by volume. It was among lots of other giant sequoias. We also saw two woodpeckers while walking among the trees: a Red-breasted Sapsucker and a White-headed Woodpecker.
Driving on, we traveled along a 30-mile winding road that went down into Kings Canyon itself. Our goal was to walk the boardwalk that went over a meadow called Zumwalt Meadow, near the end of the road. It took an hour to arrive at the meadow. We walked on the trail toward the meadow, but then was disappointed to see the boardwalk over the meadow was broken and closed. We started along another trail to try and reach another approach to the meadow, but it was hot, rocky, and longer than we wanted to walk. So we turned around and walked back.
We drove back to the park entrance, reaching it around 5 p.m. and continued out on the highway toward our bed and breakfast room in a house that would be our lodging for the night. Along the way we stopped at a pizza restaurant and had dinner.
Our lodging is called Rustic Rooms in the Yokuts Valley, where it was near 90 degrees. We were met at the door by our hostess Bobbi. She showed us around and to our room. They rent out 4 rooms to guests. In their large yard they also keep two emu birds, turkeys, chickens, a peacock, several exotic pheasants, quails, Pygmy goats, and pigs. They also have a beautiful pool. Stephanie cooled her feet in the pool and saw some good birds in the hour just before sunset, including a Hermit Warbler and an Acorn Woodpecker. I was too tired from the day’s many hours of driving to spend time at the pool.
Lori's Travels 