Camping Voices!

I went camping this past weekend in Sequoia National Park and it was quite an adventure.  I went with my friend Megan who was invited by her friend who was with her husband who was with some other friends...so I was very much removed from this crew.

We left early Friday morning in order to get up to the campsite mid-afternoon.  It turned out to be a 5-hour drive through Fresno and into the campground.  We went through the park gates at 12:15, paid our $20 park fee and then made our way up to the campsite.  By 12:40 we were stuck in traffic.  The one and only road from the southern entrance only opened up on the hour due to construction, so we sat and waited for a good 20 minutes until they opened the road and we could continue our way to Dorst Creek.  We finally got up to the campsite around 1:30 and set up our tent (a 3-person REI steal!).

After getting everything settled and all of our food in the bear boxes (used to keep all food and scented items out of harms way from the local black bears) we ventured out to find the largest tree on the planet.  The General Sherman tree is 275 feet tall, 103 feet around at the base, weighs 1385 tons, 2200 years old and 52, 500 cubic feet making it not the tallest or widest, but largest by volume on the planet.

This was our only sightseeing adventure for the evening.  We came back to the campsite around 6:00 and some people from the group we were with were starting to arrive.  Everyone else was staying through till Sunday so they could afford to get in later in the evening.  That night we didn't do too much, just made a fire and ate some food.

Saturday morning was a day set up for hiking.  The guy in charge of setting this all up wanted to leave by 8:00am to head out on a 12-mile hike.  This meant we all had to get to bed early to be well rested for a long day.  After falling soundly asleep I was of course awaken by a couple of idiots that came into camp at 2:00AM and were not even trying to be quiet.  They were on the wrong campsite, they put their stuff in the wrong bear box, were swearing up a storm and had absolutely no consideration for the fact that other people were sleeping.  They were not campers.  They did not know what camping voices were and it was really annoying, but whatever it is what it is.

Then at 6:00 in the morning Megan's friends got up along with a few other people and again everyone was talking like it was 2:00 in the afternoon.  Absolutely no respect for the fact that everyone else except the five people outside were still trying to sleep in.  After trying to fight waking up for about an hour I finally said screw it and got up.  Everyone still thought the game plan was to leave at 8:00 so people were trying to make breakfast, eat, and get ready to go.

At 8:00, Megan and I along with her friends were more than ready to go and had probably been ready for about 20 minutes now.  A good number of other people were also ready to go but of course the 'leader' of this trip was not even close.  They were still eating breakfast.  Megan wanted to go find some bears since we thought we'd be waiting a while so we walked up the hill (about 1/4 mi.) and as the shuttle to the hiking spot drove by us on its way into camp we passed on it because we thought there was NO way the rest of the group was ready.  As we realized that there were no bears in sight we turned around to go towards the shuttle stop.  As we are walking back we passed the shuttle yet again on its way out of the camp, now heading to the hiking spot and who do we see waving goodbye to us in the window but Megan's friends.  Yeah...we missed the shuttle...awesome.

As it turned out this worked out for the best and we ended up squeezing ever so tightly into some other peep's Prius.  We got to Wolverton at the base of the Lakes Trail where we proceeded to head off for Pearl Lake.  This was supposed to be a 6.2 mile hike in to the lake and was deemed EASY by some people in the group.  It definitely was not a difficult hike and after running the brutal half-marathon from the weekend before this was a cake-walk.

We passed through some incredible areas with large trees, creeks, and views of the snow-capped mountains. We got about 4 miles in and hit a big snow covered area...yes, that white stuff we usually only see in the winter at home.  This turned out to be quite the inconvenience for everyone because we couldn't find the trail...PANIC, PANIC, PANIC!!!  Oh my GOD we can't find the trail we HAVE to turn back!!!  OR maybe we could have just walked over the snow, found the trail, and then continued on for the last mile plus that we had.  But no, we spent the past two hours hiking up this mountain only to turn back 1 mile away from our goal.  Seriously???

Anyway we turned around, headed back and after briefly cooling off (icing my leg) in the brook we eventually made our way to the shuttle.  Megan and I had a long drive back to Monterey so we had to get to camp and pack everything up.  Overall it was a good time in a very scenic area but we didn't see even one bear, no lakes, no waterfalls...Sequoia 1 Payne 0.  Next time I'm going in a much smaller group and I'm finding some GD water!  This is a huge area and there was just too much to see in one day.  The views of the mountains though were spectacular and I will easily be persuaded to go back.