Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We left our mountain house and headed through Fresno to Tulare – which would serve as our jumping off point to Sequoia National Park. This house would turn out to be one of those places where we really just felt at home. Something that hasn’t happened too often, but is a really welcome feeling after this long on the road. The place we booked had both a swimming pool (with slide and diving board) and a fully functioning arcade. So, I guess, really it was nothing like our home, but we all felt really comfortable there.

After a day getting settled in Tulare – and the kids playing WAY too many video games – we set off for the park. The park, and specifically the trees, are over 7000ft in elevation, which means it was still winter there. So we left our pool, packed up our snow gear and headed for the mountains. It was a pretty twisty and turny drive up the mountain to finally reach the trees, and to be honest, a touch boring. I was probably the least impressed with Sequoia park as a whole. Luckily the trees made the drive worthwhile.

It’s always fascinating to be in the national parks. They’re filled with just about every sort of person you could imagine – in all states of preparedness. Every time we have entered one of these parks, the ranger tells us to be safe and cautious, and then we’ve never encountered anything even bordering on dangerous. Except for the other people in the park. We managed to see someone walking to the trees in flipflops and someone else filming the drive up the mountain standing up in his car out his sunroof. Now, to be fair, we had to tell the kids not to slide down the hills into the river at least 5 times, but they also aren’t old enough to rent a car.