I woke up with my headache mostly gone, but still not feeling up to the 16 mile hike to the end of the trail and back. So we picked up and made our way back to the truck. Instead we drove to the end of the road which was also the end of the trail: Glacier Point. The views were phenomenal.

After taking in the view, we scoped out Mariposa Grove, to see some giant sequoias.

Can you guess which pine cone belongs to the sequoia?
It’s actually the small one. Amazing that this little thing can grow to be one of the largest trees in the world and live to be over 2,000 years old.

Here I am counting the rings on one of the fallen trees. Mind boggling.

It was time to start heading home so we drove east towards Nevada… when we came across some yahoo parked on the wrong side of the road on halfway in our lane. But it didn’t take me long to notice what they were after… a BEAR!

This is the first time in all my many wilderness excursions that I’ve ever seen a bear in the wild. Kate and I would comment often how we haven’t seen much of any wildlife, and here, on our final trek home, we come across a bear feeding in a small meadow. We watched it for a while, as it paid no attention to the crowd that has formed by the road, but it eventually lumbered back into the forest out of sight.

But just as I was about to get back in the car, I turned and saw him actually making his way closer to us! We watched in amazement as it slowly came our direction, finding a downed tree and then clawing into it to snack on some grubs. It was the coolest thing ever. I think at one point it came to within 25 foot of me (standing by the open car door ready to jump in). Here’s some more shots of what easily was the highlight of our entire trip:

Today we went to my favorite place on the planet: Yosemite National Park.

We first made our way to the valley floor to the Visitor’s Center to pick up our wilderness permits. Camping at the typical campsites (complete with toilets and noisy neighbors in RVs) or at the many lodges in the park is next to impossible. Booking for both the campsites and lodges are hard to come by, but REAL camping in the wilderness is thankfully still easy to do. The permit is free if you get it on-site, or $5 if you reserve ahead of time which is necessary for the popular spots near and around Half Dome. They’ll even rent you a bear canister for $5 which is nice and very much needed.

Our site was going to be on the trail to Sentinel Dome. It was an easy two-mile hike to a footbridge where we setup camp. But wouldn’t you know it, I was hit by a massive migraine once we’re away from the truck (and much needed Excedrin). Kate was a trooper though and cooked up some spaghetti and finished cleaning up camp before bed. I think the roar of the river really helped calm Kate from thinking every noise in the middle of the night was a bear.

The whole purpose of this road trip is to get out and explore as much as possible, so we didn’t spend too much time in one place… but we found a few on our trip that we’ll want to spend more time at in future trips.

Case in point, San Francisco. We only had a few hours, so we started with a tour of Alcatraz.

Caleb and I did Alcatraz last time I was in the Bay Area, but this time Kate and I did the free audio tour which was pretty informative. All in all it’s a great place to check out.

We then parked the car and dug out the bikes and made our way across the Golden Gate bridge. It was a beautiful day for a ride.

Richard gave us a tip that we needed to go to Stout Grove, an amazingly scenic grove of redwoods and rumored location for the forest moon of Endor in the movie Starwars: Return of the Jedi. Simply put, no pictures do this place justice. It was one of the coolest places I’ve ever been to, dwarfed by giants and walking alone in this magical rain forest really did feel like another planet.

To get a sense of scale, here’s a shot of me standing in front of one of the trees (you may have to click on the image to see me).

I had always seen pictures of people driving through this giant redwoods, but was slightly disappointed when I didn’t see one anywhere. Turns out that only a few of these trees are still around and that all of them are on private land that you have to pay to access. Well, we happened upon one and had to check it out. I think it was worth the five bucks.

The rest of the day was spent driving down to Gilmore, CA (about an hour south of San Francisco) to spend some time with Kate’s cousin Kaci (and luckily Aunt Kelly who was also in town while Kaci’s husband was in China).

We attempted to stop by Sawyer Cellers in Napa to pick up a couple bottles of the family wine, but sadly they were closed at the time. Next time.

We left Eugene and drove straight for Crater Lake… an amazing lake completely surrounded by sheer mountains. Said to have been formed by the collapse of a giant volcano, there are no streams in or out of the lake so it remains one of the most pure freshwater lakes in the world as well as deepest in America.

It’s also a place that gets more snow than anywhere I’ve been (including our lovely mountain home at the moment). They average 500 inches of snow a year, and with the particularly strong winter we’ve had, they’re thinking it’ll be July 4th by the time they finally clear the snow from the rim drive. Sadly just about everything was still covered in 30 foot of snow, so we could only access this one point of the lake. We’re already planning on going back to bike the entire rim road next time.

After leaving Crater Lake, we stopped to see an amazing chasm carved by the roaring Rogue River. With all the snow melting, we got a chance to see some incredible raging rivers on this trip.

That night we made our way to Medford, OR to have dinner and chat with Richard Larcombe and his family. Richard’s last day of work at NNYM just happened to be the next day so it was nice to see him off as he’s now heading into full-time evangelism.