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Nest week I’ll be
heading out to California to visit my daughter who lives in Northern California
about 60 miles from San Francisco and about three or four hours from Yosemite
National Park. For the last three years we’ve gone to Yosemite National Park to
camp. However, because of the horrible fires this year we probably won’t go
there although if it the fires have been put out we may at least go for a day’s
visit.
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| My daughter Mary on an overlook. |
Yosemite is the most
awesome place I’ve ever visited and I’ve visited a lot of national parks like
Grand Canyon and others. Three years ago my youngest sister and brother-in-law
went with us and camped in a campground on the edge of the park. We had such a
good time. That was my first trip there, I think, although my daughter Mary and
I might have gone there the year before and camped in Curry Village which is in
the valley in the center of Yosemite National Park. I know we stayed in a tent
on a wooden platform with steps going up to it the first year we went. All
those white tents reminded me of a Civil War Army encampment. Another year we
stayed in a cabin in Curry Village which was quite nice.
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| Another awesome view in Yosemite. |
This year we’re going
to camp in Big Basin a state park not too far from where she lives in Benicia
California. We’re going to travel along the ocean and stop at various small
towns on the way to Big Basin. I’ve been there before but not to camp. It’s a
forest with huge red wood trees that grow over 350 feet. Quite awesome, too,
although not as much as Yosemite.
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| My sister took the picture of me and her husband. |
Yosemite also has an incredible grove of Giant Sequoias which are in the redwood tree family and the most awesome trees I’ve ever seen even more so than the giant redwoods. Both the tall redwood trees and Sequoias grow to ancient ages because they have a high resistance to fire, insects and diseases. I have two dawn redwoods on my property. They started out not much more than six feet maybe, and now they are quite tall.
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| Mary by a Giant Sequoia |
Whether we go to
Yosemite or not, I’m looking forward to my trip to California where we will
camp for a few days, go to San Francisco another day, and hopefully take a trip
to Yosemite National Park.
If we do got to Yosemite to camp or stay in a cabin,
the one thing I’m really looking forward to is to go see Lee Stetson, who is
the world’s foremost John Muir portrayer. I first saw him at a Cuyahoga
Valley’s Happy Day’s lodge program portraying John Muir with another man
portraying President Theodore Roosevelt. Then Mary and I saw him in a theater
in Curry Village in Yosemite. My daughter took a picture of me with him, but I
don’t know where that picture is now. Later that week we went to the town where
John Muir lived not far from Benicia. That was very interesting, too.
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| Mary and I at the John Muir Museum |
Have you ever visited
Yosemite National Park?
Have you ever camped in
any National Park?
Gloria, have a great trip!
ReplyDeleteI wish I had as much energy as you have, Gloria. Thanks for the wonderful photos of Yosemite. Have a wonderful trip.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThank you, Margaret.
Grace, it helps having a small farm with animals to feed and care for.
I have to admit I don't want to crawl out of bed in the morning but I
have to because Maggie, my collie, Brat Cat, my house cat and my ponies,
barn cat, chickens and my son's peacock over by his house need fed. Even
though my son mows the large area behind my barn and around the pond, I
still have to mow the rest of my lawn divided by trees and shrubs and
arbors that my son can't get his huge riding mower through.
As for Yosemite, I only hope you can go there some year.
Sequoias are amazing. Yosemite and King's Canyon are wonderful places to visit and you can contemplate everything that happened in the lifetime of those trees.
ReplyDeleteMy family and I camped in Great Smoky Mountains National Park the summer I turned twelve. As a child I also camped in New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Nova Scotia, Canada.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great adventure! I hope you do make it to Yosemite, but either way, it sounds like you have fun planned. I've never been west of the Houston (can you believe it!), but I have camped up and down the east coast and Canada, Europe, and the Caribbean. It was a simpler time, no reservations required, so I don't recall which were National Parks and which were merely campgrounds. Nowadays I understand planning is required. Not so then.
ReplyDeleteHave a great trip, Gloria! You and your family have such wonderful adventures. Thanks for sharing the pictures with us.
ReplyDeleteWarren, I've never been to King's Canyon. Where is it because I'd like to go there, too.
ReplyDeleteAlexis, my family camped in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, too. I was grown up with kids by then We've also camped in New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Canada, but never Nova Scotia, although I've always wanted to go there, too.
Kait most of my camping was done in the east, but never much further south that Kentucky and the Carolina's. I have traveled to Canada and Europe, but never camped in Europe while I was there.
Thank you, KM. I was lucky to have a family who loved to camp. My family camping started when I was a young teenager, and then wwhen I got married, my first camping trip with my husband and family was when I was seven months pregnant with my first child. We continued camping even with little ones. In fact, long before baby backpacks were created, my husband made the first one.
To think that if he'd tried to get a pattone for it we could be rich.