Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, February 14-15, 2010

Sunday we arrived in the afternoon and headed straight to the Woolverton snow play area to get some non-driving activity in before the sun set. I tried out my new snowshoes, purchased in New Hampshire with Hannah at the Ocean State Job Lots, one of my new favorite tightwad shopping experiences. My snowshoes were less than 2/3 the price of Noam's cheapest-on-sale-at-REI showshoes (if you don't count the postage required when I couldn't fit them in my luggage and made Hannah mail them to me), AND they included poles AND a bag. They are awesome. They will no doubt fall apart after about a dozen uses, but by the time I reach a dozen uses, I could be 50! Woolverton snow play area is crammed with people and kinda sucks but here are the snowshoes:

We stayed at the Wuksachi Lodge. Though the lodge is pretty basic for how expensive it is, it isn't quite basic/expensive enough to explain my irrational dislike of the Delaware North Company, the concessionaire who runs the lodges and other stuff in Yosemite and Sequoia/Kings Canyon parks. I should be a huge fan solely from my experience with Tioga, our mule, the world's greatest mule, a 20+ year Delaware North employee. But I'm not. Something about crass profiteering in the national parks, I guess. One thing I do love is how easy it is to get their employees to bag on them. Sunset at the lodge:

Monday morning we got up pretty early and I snowshoed and Noam skied in the grove where the General Sherman tree is. It was beautiful, the sun was rising and lighting the trees, and we had the entire grove to ourselves. It was pretty icy and Noam fell a couple of times. It must have felt like falling on concrete. Ouch! I have become a big fan of snowshoeing, since they work really well when conditions suck for cross country skiing, which is pretty much always in California. Noam with the General Sherman tree:

We tried again at Big Meadows in the Sequoia National Forest. The cross country skiing there was great because it had gotten warm enough for the ice to soften, plus it was in the national forest so we could bring our guns and our dogs and build giant fires, thank god. Cool clouds viewed from the road out of the park:

Take that Fresno! We got all the sun, you guys can suck it!