After another cold night sleeping at 6500ft, we were up bright and early to start the last day of our American adventure.
By 6.30 there were already glowing flames and small plumes of smoke rising from campfires next to some of the tents around the forest. As it started to get light, we were on our way by 7 to drive along the Kings Scenic byway to watch sunrise, beat the crowds and get in a final trail run before making a start on our 250 mile journey down to San Francisco.

The drive to Kings Canyon was about 16 miles and it was indeed very scenic as it wound steeply up and then down into the canyon with steep cliffs to one side of us and an even steeper drop off to the other.
We stopped at a high spot to watch sunrise and send fingers of golden light down the canyon - it seemed to light up individual beams of light.
It was a beautiful drive alongside the rocky river in the floor of the canyon. We were looking forward to our trail run to Mist Falls - a six mile route following the river along the valley and then climbing steeply up to the waterfalls.
Suddenly we could smell smoke and realised that the ‘morning mist’ that was creating a haze around us was, in fact wood smoke.
We kept going but were surprised at the number of vehicles coming back down the valley towards us (at this early hour it seemed odd that people were leaving the area rather than starting their hike).
Then the smoke became much denser and we saw an orange glow through the trees, and felt a brief moment of panic that we could be driving into a forest fire.
In fact it was just morning light reflecting off the smoke particles and a few minutes later we came to a warning sign advising us that this was a ‘prescribed fire’ - in other words the rangers carrying out planned burning of an area of land as a way of preventing a fire outbreak. This meant we were safe but the smoke was very annoying as it smelt awful and obscured the views. We certainly wouldn’t be able to run along the Mist Falls trail as planned.
We parked up - not surprisingly, we had the place to ourselves!
We opted instead to run the Copper Creek trail that started from the same place at Roads End, but climbed steeply up out of the canyon and above the smoke.
The path was really good - a bouncy mix of light grit with leaf mould, acorns and pine needles.
Apart the lingering smell of smoke and lots of flies it was a beautiful run - steep but with spectacular views down over the trees in the canyon and along the sheer rock faces. The smoke almost filled the valley floor like a cloud, with the tree tops peeping through. Very atmospheric.
It was already very hot so after 90 minutes we turned and ran back down, hopped into the van and drive back out of the canyon.
Once out of the smoke we stopped beside the river in a quiet sunny spot under some oak trees for breakfast.
It was nearly time for our to the west coast for our flight home. We stopped off at Grant Grove to admire to second largest tree in the world. Lots of tourists - but still a beautiful part of the forest.
Then it’s time to go and we were off to San Francisco.
Today there was no scenic route to follow, apart from our initial descent from the canyon, so we set the sat nav for the Pacific coast, turned on the audio book - now John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and got going.
It was a long journey along miles of flat interstate highways.
We stopped for coffee and internet half way and arrived at San Francisco just after sunset. We joined the queues of traffic to cross the city and arrived at Half Moon Bay at around 9. Sadly the Half Moon Bay State Beach campground was full. Disappointing because the campground was actually on the beach - ideal for a morning swim tomorrow.
Our second choice was the Half Moon Bay RV Park, a larger site about half a mile from the beach.
Latest check in was 10pm, and we squeaked into our place at 9.59!
We ate supper, packed our bags and slept.