The King of Canyons - Part 3

Second stop was the Roaring River falls, a slightly longer walk to a much bigger water fall. There was no playing in the pool at the bottom of this falls, the current was much stronger. We climbed on some rocks to get a good view, admired the ferocity, and then headed back to the car. The power of the water to carve through rock is always impressive especially when the cliffs are so imposing. 

Our last stop was the Zumwalt Meadow. We crossed a suspension bridge that the kids loved. They caught sight of a small beach and wanted back in the water but we kept on walking. We caught sight of the meadow and saw a deer grazing. John and Charlotte thought this was enough and I took them back to the beach to play in the water. Mary, Gen and Aisling continued and saw a beautiful, but slightly underwhelming, meadow. Mary didn’t want to give up on another hike so kept going but was disappointed by the result. John and Charlotte loved playing in the water. 

We caught our last views of the towering canyon walls fading with the sun’s light on our way out. We took the switchbacks back up the mountain to pick up the trailer before going down the mountain on our way out of the park. There was some debate about whether to press on to Yosemite or find a place on the edge of Sequoia National Park. We decided to push onwards with a quick stop in Fresno for groceries and Jack in the Box.

 Refreshed we pushed on to Yosemite with a fantastic site right outside the park as our goal. While doing a casual check into what Yosemite National Park consists of, we found that they required a reservation and there weren’t any reservations available for two weeks. We have never experienced this before. You are allowed to go in without a reservation if you enter before 6am or after 4pm. We pushed on into the park to try to find a campsite. After scouring a campground for a spot, we decided to set-up just outside of the park. It was 1am, a lazy morning was in our future, we decided to wait until 4pm the next day to enter. 

We found a beautiful little site in the woods and spent some time levelling. It wasn’t until the next morning we realized there was a level parking lot with a washroom 1 minute away.