On Monday, we (my parents and brother and nephews) drove out to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. California has eight national parks, but it's more like seven, because Kings Canyon and Sequoia are practically the same. We visited the same parks in 2013, but it's fun to return.
We saw the General Sherman, the largest tree in the world, which is neither the tallest nor the widest but the most voluminous. I can't remember whether this one is it, however, as there were lots of giant trees.
These kids love Nutella, and Franklin grew a goatee by smashing his face into his bread. He cracks me up.
On Tuesday, we went to places we hadn't been before. Kings Canyon has two disconnected areas in its boundaries, so we went to the larger portion and saw a few interesting places there. However, the larger portion is mostly backcountry, and we're not backcountry folks, so we only saw a few minor things, such as this waterfall. The granite of the Sierra Nevada is much older than the granite I'm used to seeing in the Wasatch Front.
We also spent time in Sequoia National Forest (as opposed to the national park), which was less restrictive. My nephews really didn't want to go on this little hike, but we got them to go. We passed through recently burned forest.
This area of the forest was heavily logged at the turn of last century, and there are lots and lots of giant sequoia stumps. They literally logged thousands of them. We have differing values in the twenty-first century.
The main focus of the trail, however was the Boole Tree, the sixth-largest in the world, and the only big tree (or one of the only trees) the loggers spared. Since this was a national forest instead of a national park, we were able to go right up to it and appreciate how massive it really was. Here are Preston (11) and Nathaniel (6) for scale. There was graffiti scratched into the tree, because apparently people like to memorialize that they are terrible human beings.
There were a few cracks where you could actually get inside the tree. I asked my dad to take a picture of me in the crack, but apparently he's smartphone camera illiterate.
This trail was a loop, and Preston and Nathaniel were dismayed to learn that we were completing the loop, which made it longer, but for all their complaining they seemed to enjoy running down the trail. (Franklin's not as big into the running.) I kept up with Nathaniel, and he's quite fast, faster than I usually am on a trail.
I don't know if these were sego lilies or one of their relatives, but it was nice to have a Utah feel in the Sierra Nevada.
My mom had bought my nephews souvenirs, and the older boys got gigantic pencils with their souvenir money, but Nathaniel had already spent all his. He was quite envious of the pencils, so he "sold" one of his animal flipbooks back to my mom and obsessed about getting a giant pencil. It was all he could talk about, and we never returned to the one gift shop that sold them.
On Wednesday, we packed up but saw a few interesting things before we returned to my brother's residence in the Bay Area. We went to see the Chicago Stump, which was a giant sequoia that was cut down and shipped in pieces for the 1893 World's Fair, but they thought it was a hoax because it was so big. There was a smaller stump nearby that all three nephews climbed.
On Wednesday evening we took my nephews to the drive-in to see The Secret Life of Pets, a movie so forgettable I almost forgot to put it here.
We had one more full day with my nephews before ending our month-long visit with them. I will miss Nathaniel saying things were "bloken," Franklin calling me "Grunkle Uncle Mark," and Preston's pseudo-political discussions. (Well, I probably won't miss those.)
On Friday, my parents and I headed up to a national park where I'd never been, Redwoods National Park. (Here I am, 27 years old and taking road trips with my parents, since nobody else ever invites me.) There are actually several Redwood state parks in the area, and I don't entirely know when I was in a national park or a state park, much less which state park. While I love being a native Utahn, sometimes I get California envy, and I certainly felt that here. There were coniferous forests right next to the ocean.
We went to the Ladybird Johnson Grove, and I know that was in the national park. It was amazing. It felt like being in a magical forest. Redwoods are the tallest trees in the world (as opposed to sequoias, which are bigger but not taller), and there were plenty of them in the forest. But there were other enchanting things. Like large tree mushrooms,
The next morning we drove up to Oregon to see another national park I'd never visited, Crater Lake. I'd learned about Crater Lake in my geology classes but this was my first time seeing it for myself. Once upon a time, one of the Cascade Mountains was Mount Mazama, but it exploded about 7,000 years ago, and the top collapsed (since the magma chamber emptied) and created a caldera, which collected precipitation, particularly snow runoff. (Seven thousand years may sound like a long time ago, but geologically speaking that's just yesterday. Maybe even today.) There are no rivers running into or out of the lake.
In the lake is Wizard Island. I always thought it was a rhyolite dome, but apparently it's just a cinder cone.
After all the granite of the Sierra Nevadas, it was good to see some extrusive igneous rocks, since they are cool because they form quickly. I saw some tuff boulders (not tough--tuff and tough are etymologically unrelated) and lots of rhyolitic rocks. We even drove past some shiny glass rocks.
My dad and I hiked down to the lake itself, which was fun. (We didn't have time to take a boat to Wizard Island.) The water was cold (it's all meltwater), but there were still lots of people jumping in. The trail down had shiny specks in it. I'm guessing it was quartz, since this volcano is so silicic.
Lots of stratovolcanoes in the Cascades. I don't know which one this is.
We saw Phantom Ship, an island that is older than the explosion. It was "plumbing" at one point for the old volcano.
We spent the night in Lakeview, Oregon. This was my second trip to Oregon, the first being in 2010 when I visited my mission with my parents.
Then today we drove through Oregon, Nevada, and Utah to get home. I think my dad killed a rabbit or two and a bird, but it's their own fault for not running away from fast vehicles.
We stopped at a gas station in Nevada. I no longer consider myself a prescriptivist, but this is pretty bad.
Our last rest stop was out on the Bonneville Salt Flats. I had to taste some of the salt, harking back to my days as a geologist. Then I saw evidence of terrible human beings not cleaning up after their dogs.
I hope my travelogue didn't bore you to tears. Now it's back to the working world.
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