No visit to California is complete without seeing the giant Redwoods, so as we completed our detour loop to Bodie and Manzanar (on the way to San Francisco), we made one last stop in Sequoia and Kings Canyon.
I had planned for us to just drive into King’s Canyon and see the General Grant tree, which is the third largest in the world. Since we were short on time and had only another day or so to get to San Francisco, coming in on 180 and visiting just General Grant and the surrounding area seemed like a smart idea. Somewhere along the line, I lost my mind and decided I should just drive through Sequoia since I was coming from the south anyway. We could stop a couple times and see the other largest trees, including General Sherman.
BUT YOU DON’T JUST DRIVE THROUGH SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK!
It is a wickedly winding (though beautiful) road before you even get to the park entrance on the south end of Sequoia. Then it’s a two-hour switchback drive through Sequoia to get to Kings Canyon. AND there’s road construction this summer which added another hour of wait time.
So we did a U-turn, drove many miles back out to the highway, skirted the park and came into King’s Canyon, as I had originally planned. It was fantastic:)
We walked the trail up to General Grant and inside a hollowed-out trunk of a fallen Redwood. This is an experience in perspective!!
Trip West 2010 Series:
Badlands
1880’s Town -Murdo, SD
Black Hills, South Dakota
Yellowstone National Park
Family Search in Temple Square, Salt Lake City
Ghost Towns, Wyoming and California
Manzanar War Relocation Center
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
As my daughter and I continued our journey to the Pacific, we decided to go out of our way to include a visit to the Manzanar National Historic Site, near Sequoia National Park
Here’s a brief description of Manzanar’s history, from the National Park Service:
In 1942, the United States government ordered more than 110,000 men, women, and children to leave their homes and detained them in remote, military-style camps. Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten camps where Japanese American citizens and resident Japanese aliens were interned during World War II.
This was a different kind of history than we’d been learning about — throughout our trip West, we’d seen mostly 1880’s Gold Rush sites. And I probably wouldn’t have noticed this understated historical site in our guidebook, except that my daughter had just read the book, Manzanar, in her literature course. It’s a poignant story about a girl who lived in Manzanar.
We drove a long ways out of the way to visit Manzanar (and Bodie ghost town), but it was worth it for us. The grounds are mostly vacant, but you can take a self-guided auto tour to see where the foundations for the buildings that once stood.
They’re in the process of building a replica barracks building and excavating drifted sand to reveal the beautiful gardens the Japanese-Americans built while they were interned at Manzanar. The museum inside the original auditorium is a well-done and thoughtful presentation of life inside the camp, the political storm brewing during that time in our history, and the social implications of discrimination, racial profiling and fear.
(Admission-free, donations encouraged.)
Trip West 2010 Series:
Badlands
1880’s Town -Murdo, SD
Black Hills, South Dakota
Yellowstone National Park
Family Search in Temple Square, Salt Lake City
Ghost Towns, Wyoming and California
Manzanar War Relocation Center
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
This month’s Positively Speaking column focuses on positive family communication, and tips for how to make it happen during summer vacation. I’ll write about our family adventure out West in the coming weeks, but today I’ll just share a couple of Badlands photos. To read my tips for positive family communication on your travels, please visit 5 Minutes for Mom.
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Trip West 2010 Series:
Badlands
1880’s Town -Murdo, SD
(Originally published July 2007.)
During our recent mother/daughter trip to Boston, we took a four-hour whale watching trip aboard the Massachusetts. It was an excellent diversion for this particular 95-degree day. Neither of us had ever been on a whale-watching excursion, but apparently we were extremely lucky.
(Here the whale’s nose is just coming out of the water on the right.)
The captain took us out about an hour past Boston Harbor, to the feeding area. This is where there’s a significant dropoff underwater, so the fish and krill congregate there. The water in this area is very green as well, which shows the amount of algae and other food sources available there.
(You can see the whale’s blowhole on the right, just entering the water.)
In addition to the numerous whales we saw in the distance (many of them looked much like dolphins), and a superfast fin whale that outswam the boat, we were fortunate that a mother and baby humpback whale came right up to the boat, and hung out for us to take pictures.
Then they went underneath the boat and came up on the other side. They seemed to wait for us there, so everyone aboard could go to the other side to take photos as well.
The captain spent extra time out there, so it was a longer trip than normal, but he said he’d never had a whale go under the boat before. I guess we were luckier with our whale-watching excursion, than Pamela was.
Our Boston Series:
Happy Independence Day
Mom and Daughter Trip to Boston
Passing the Torch – On Cranberry Pond
B&B Review
Bed and Breakfast Review
Biking on Cape Cod
Whale Watching
Reading Little Women
Salem, MA Wrought Iron
Salem Cobblestone
Today is Lemonade Stand Day, a nation-wide event that supports young entrepreneurs in learning the ways of business. To read more about it, and other ways you can encourage your child’s entrepreneurial spirit, please read my Positively Speaking column at 5 Minutes for Mom.
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You can also follow me on Twitter.
