Hoover Dam, Seqoia National Park and Yosemite

Upon leaving Zion we headed to Las Vegas.  Talk about a contrast!  Our primary purpose was to visit the Hoover Dam, but we opted to decrease our time pulling the trailer and parked at a park in the city.  This travel day happened to fall on my birthday and I really wanted a place with a hot tub, so my wish was granted!  I also wanted steak for dinner so we went out to a buffet at the casino/resort that we stayed at.  It was an exercise in gluttony.  So much food it felt wrong.  We enjoyed a nice swim and headed to the Hoover dam the next day.  Doug was the one who had the most interest in the dam, but we all ended up being glad we went.  The engineering was incredible!  The one thing we noticed though was the amount of trash laying about.   The national parks were so clean that this really contrasted in a negative way.

When we got back into the city we decided to take a drive down the miracle mile.  I can now say "been there, done that" and I never need to go back again.  After seeing the rolling billboards for the naked girl shows we decided fairly quickly that it was time to go home.

We did a long driving day the next day and made our way to Three Rivers, Ca.  This was just a few miles from the entrance to Sequoia National Park.  We made our way to the groves of the giant Sequoia's the next day.  Wow, they're huge!  There was still quite a bit of snow at the higher elevations so a lot of the trails were still closed.  We did do a nice hike along a closed road to Moro Rock. 

Yosemite was next on our places to see.  We stayed at a nice campground that was about 25 miles from the park.  We couldn't get reservations in the park.  We surprised to find that the hikes/visitors center etc were another 25 miles into the park.  The 50 miles were along curving mountainous roads.  The drive took 1.5 hours.  When we finally got to the park we were astounded by the waterfalls.  The snow melt has enlarged the rivers and falls phenomenally.   Bridalveil falls, Yosemite falls were huge and beautiful!  We wandered around the first day and did a few short hikes.  We also saw a film featuring climber Ron Kauk and had a chance to talk with him after the movie.

The next day we did a strenuous hike up Vernal and Nevada falls.  We walked the Mist trail alongside Vernal falls and got soaked!  The total hike was about 7.5 miles, with about 2000 feet of elevation change.  It was challenging but fun.