In the last days of our trip we visited some national parks: Yosemite, King's Canyon, Sequoia and Zion. We absolutely loved being in these parks. Here are a few overviews of what we did.

Yosemite National Park
This park was busy. There were so many people here. But that didn't ruin the time we had here. Before we got to the visitor center, we stopped at a small beach overlook to have our picnic lunch. We then went to the visitor center. From there we hiked by Yosemite falls. It has been very dry in California, so the falls were not as big they could be. There was a shuttle that you can take around the park. It was very handy, even though the bus was very crowded. Our first stop was Mirror Lake. We wanted to have a view of Half Dome, a rock formation. On our hike out to Mirror Lake, there were a bunch of people standing on the path and taking pictures. Paul and I both thought that it was probably a deer or some other small wildlife. When we got there, it was a mama bear with two cubs. You would think that seeing a bear in real life would be cool. It's actually pretty scary. Thankfully everyone around was very respectful. The bear never came on the path. It just dug around looking for food about 50 feet into the woods. Paul took some pictures and then we continued on to Mirror Lake. The view was beautiful there! The sheer granite cliffs are just amazing to look at. After this hike it was getting hot and late, so we decided to leave the park, but stop at some viewpoints. The first was Valley View. We could have taken pictures here for a long time. Too bad the sun was in a bad spot. The second stop was Tunnel View. As we were looking around, Paul spotted a rainbow in the distance. It was an absolute perfect way to end a great visit to Yosemite.

King's Canyon National Park
We visited the smaller section of this park. I'm sure the larger part of this place is absolutely great, but we just didn't have the time. We did get to see the General Grant tree. This is the 3rd largest tree in the world. We also walked through a tunnel of a dead tree. This tree had been on the ground like that for over 100 years. Sequoias are resistant to rot. Pretty cool. It was a great starter before we visited Sequoia National Park.

Sequoia National Park
If anyone tells you that a park full of trees will be boring, tell them that they should go to Sequoia National Park. If anyone thinks that they are tall, tell them to go to that park. We were blown away by how magnificent these trees were. As you walked around the trails, you couldn't help but feel small. Most of your hiking is spent with your head tilted up toward the trees. We took the shuttle down to the General Sherman tree. This tree is huge! It is the world's largest tree! You can't get it all in one picture unless you are far enough away. Then we took a walk along Congress path. Here we saw a few named trees and groups of trees. The President is another huge tree. The Senate and The House are groups of these huge trees that are close together. The House has more trees in the grouping than The Senate. Paul and I had a fun time trying to take some fun pictures.

Zion National Park.
We did this park on the last full day of our trip, so we were pretty tired. We drove to Zion and it was raining. Now raining in the desert is either a slight sprinkle where everyone needs umbrellas, or a downpour. Thankfully it was just a sprinkle. It was the first time we encountered rain this entire trip. So we grabbed our ponchos and went hiking on the Watchman trail. This is a moderate hike. We didn't quite make it to the top. Being that a year earlier I had been through 4 major surgeries, I am proud as to how far I made it. The path was not paved and it climbed pretty high, so my hip and stamina were waning pretty quickly. So instead we went back to the visitors center and ate lunch with a great view. This park also had a shuttle to get you to major places. We took this to the Court of the Patriarchs first. These are 3 mountains peaks named after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. A very majestic sight. Next we took it to the Emerald pools. This was a nice easy hike to a lower pool. The upper pools fell into this lower pool. The waterfall from that was a small drizzle. It was fun to see. We finally took the Riverside Walk. This was a nice and easy walk to the start of the Narrows hike through the Virgin River. We didn't do that hike, but the Riverside Walk was beautiful along the river.

We hope to get back to some of these National Parks again and do more hiking and exploring. If you have the chance, you should definitely go there. These were my favorite days of our trip!