As Doug was working in Los Angeles, Fran joined him there instead of him coming home to Renton. So as we are prone to doing, we decided to knock a few more national parks off our list. As the President declared a new park in California earlier this year, there are now 59 national parks – of which we have seen 43 up to this point.

On the Friday, we drove north to Pinnacles National Park east of Fresno. It’s not a large park but the draw is the talus caves. There are two entrances to this park and we went to the West Entrance because at this time of year, the large talus cave at the East Entrance is closed as it’s a bat habitat and they are not to be disturbed. So we took a loop hike that took us up the “balconies” and then through the talus caves. Very cool (not temperature wise tho!).

That night we went to Fresno for the night where we first enjoyed the pool before heading out to dinner.

We were up early on Saturday and headed east to Kings Canyon National Park which is right next door to Sequoia National Park. The special thing about these two parks are the giant sequoias and the Kings Canyon itself. We did several hikes ranging from 10 minutes to an hour-ish including the 400 steps up Moro Rock and saw some beautiful trees, vistas and learned some history.

That night we spent in Three Rivers outside Sequoia then went back into that park on a different road the following morning into a separate set of canyons seeing more sequoias and majestic views.

Hope you enjoy our our photos!