07/29/2026 Hikes

We slept until after 7:00 and got up around 7:30. I got up to pee a couple of times in the night, as usual had some trouble getting back to sleep after the interruptions. There wasn't aot of time to spare in the morning. I started the water for coffee and made chopped grilled vegetables and eggs for breakfast. It turned out pretty well, I think. Washed my hair and upper body with the sprayer after that and felt better, a little cleaner. We were on the road to Crystal Cave around 9:30. It took about an hour to get to the Giant Trees Museum, where we stopped (we had some time to kill) and walked over to look around. Tiny museum, moderately interesting. Then we drove another half hour plus (got caught behind a couple of extra cautious vehicles on a bumpy road) down to the trailhead for Crystal Cave and ate sandwiches for lunch. Talked to some Israelis visiting from London before we lined up for the tour. It involved a 0.5 mile hike down a pretty steep trail to the cave entrance, where we met our guide Jay. He was quite entertaining and not over the top. The tour was about 45 minutes and worth the effort to get there. This is one of the few extended cave systems with mostly marble walls, there were pretty rock formations, and the tour was about the right length for me. The hike back to the top was tortuous for me, Ann was walking really slowly and having to pause regularly. We got to the top, and she had to get a treatment to apply to where she had touched some poison oak on the way down. That took another ten minutes, so I went into meditate mode. After she came back we drove back up the hill, faster this time, and then over to the parking lot by the General Sherman tree. Again, the 0.5 mile walk down to the tree and then back up was very slow. The tree itself, the largest by volume in the world, is impressive enough that I wanted to wait in line to get our picture taken by it. That was a minor comedy. One family a couple of people in front of us abused their privilege by taking a ton of pics, to the point where I was joking with the guy right in front of us, who was being shushed by his partner. We were much quicker when our turn came. Then it was the slow trudge back to the car. Serenity now. I drove us back to the campsite after this, avoiding a stop at Lodge pole that Ann had considered. Felt good to get back and just sit down, have something to drink and some hors d'oeuvres. Ann used the sprayer to clean up, which was a plus. Temperature at the campsite during the day had been great, warm with a gentle breeze. I made a simple dinner for us, burgers on the grill, they were tasty. After dinner and cleaning up, we lazed around the campsite, I closed my eyes for a bit, as did Ann. Then we walked in the dusk over to the amphitheater, hoping to catch a ranger program. Unfortunately, I had read the program list incorrectly, and the program was in Cedar Grove. So we ended up on a little hike on some tricky terrain, making our way over to the general store. We thought about buying ice, but I didn't want to carry it back. So we walked back to the site and got ready for sleep. Of course, there were crying children whose screams echoed across the campground. It's part of the camping experience, I guess. To sleep, eventually, after we both settled down.