Twin Parks, Ancient Trees, and a Beautiful Canyon: A National Park Odyssey Days 20-21

Kings Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park

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Park #10 - Kings Canyon

The John Muir Lodge, which is where we spent the three nights we were exploring Kings Canyon and Sequoia, is located in Kings Canyon National Park.  You almost always hear these two parks mentioned together, but they are actually separate.  Well, sort of.  Let’s just say that if they had a Facebook relationship status, it would read, “It’s complicated.”  They are side by side, they share the same Junior Ranger program, they have separate signs, and both of them have giant sequoia groves within their boundaries.  Kings Canyon is far less crowded (with the exception of the General Grant Grove), and both are surrounded by a national forest.  For our first day, we stuck to Kings Canyon.

We LOVED the central location of the John Muir Lodge inside Kings Canyon National Park.

We woke up on day 20 relieved to find that no bears had broken in to our car overnight, so we climbed in headed for a nearby driving trail to Panorama Point.  From the lookout area you would expect to be able to see Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states which is located nearby, but you’d be wrong.  Oddly enough, Mt. Whitney is hidden behind other less-tall mountains from pretty much every angle.  Nevertheless, our effort to climb up the short but steep-ish paved trail to the lookout was rewarded with a sweeping vista.

See Mt. Whitney in the distance? Yeah, me neither.

The snow-capped mountains in the distance were beautiful.

Our next stop was the General Grant Tree, a giant sequoia which is the third largest tree in the world and is located in one of the groves in Kings Canyon.  It is 267 feet tall and more than 1500 years old.  (In case you’re wondering as we were, Coastal Redwoods are the tallest trees, but sequoias grow far bigger around.)  The area was overrun with tourists like us, and the line to get a picture standing in front of the tree was longer than I was willing to face.  Instead we walked the loop and got some decent pictures from the side and the back.  We walked through the Fallen Monarch tree and contemplated the extraordinary lifespans of these magnificent plants. 

The majestic General Grant tree is so impressive that it won't fit into a regular camera shot without being too far away to see the sign.

The Fallen Monarch has been hollowed out by forest fires so you can walk through it.

Sequoias have no known upper lifespan limit.  They can withstand forest fires that wipe out less-resilient species, and many of the trees within the two parks’ boundaries were alive at the time of Christ.    Sequoias often die because the soil surrounding them becomes too wet and soft, making their top-heavy forms no match for gravity.  Many of the trees we saw were leaning like living towers of Pisa, but, of course, they could stay in that seemingly precarious position for years before eventually toppling over.

Giant sequoias start out as tiny pine cones like this one in Knox's hand.

In the 1950s, a campground with cabins was located right in the middle of the General Sherman Grove of ancient giant sequoias in Sequoia National Park.  At the time, one sequoia was leaning severely and threatened to fall on one of the cabins.  The decision was made by the NPS to cut down the tree to ensure the safety of tourists staying at the campground.  While I understand that no one wants to be smashed in their sleep by a 2,000 year old tree, the idea that one of these majestic trees would be sacrificed just so a bunch of tourists could spend the night in a protected grove gave me pause.

Knox reads about the fate of this downed giant.

Based on the way Knox and I felt whenever we passed a sequoia stump or an interpretive sign explaining how many of the giants had been felled during logging, we decided not to do the Big Stump Trail.  We agreed that it would be far too depressing.

We returned to the visitors’ center to finish up the Junior Ranger booklets and were thrilled to have a very charming and entertaining ranger swear in Kinley and Knox.  We’re still repeating some of his corny jokes weeks later.  A brand new restaurant inside the park had opened up the day before, so we decided to have lunch there.

We have had so many pleasant interactions with park rangers on this trip.  Almost all of them have been generous with their time and attention, but this ranger was especially memorable.

That afternoon, we drove down into Kings Canyon, a drive that took about an hour and ten minutes.  The scenery along the way was beautiful, a very different kind of canyon from the Grand Canyon but grand nonetheless.  We pulled over to check out a waterfall on Ten Mile Creek before proceeding on to Zumwalt Meadow where we planned to hike a loop trail.  We arrived at dusk, so there were only a couple of cars in the trailhead parking lot.

Even if Kings Canyon weren't populated with Giant Sequoias, the breathtaking canyon alone would be reason to protect it.

Knox and I enjoyed the rushing water of Ten-Mile Creek.

The loop trail through the picturesque meadow crossed a river and included a boardwalk section affording a view of the surrounding trees and mountains.  Unfortunately, the boardwalk was flooded meaning that we wouldn’t be able to complete the loop.  We turned back after snapping a few pictures and enjoying the scenery.  We proceeded to walk around the loop in the opposite direction through giant boulders and past delicate wildflowers until the bugs forced us to retreat to the car.

At the beginning of the Zumwalt Meadow Trail is a bridge spanning a picturesque river.

Visiting the meadow in the late afternoon was perfect for us (except for the bugs).

You can see how the boardwalk was flooded in this picture.  We were really hoping to get to do the whole loop because the scenery was lovely and the temperature was pleasant.

Cedar Grove Lodge is another park lodge in the bottom of the canyon, and we had hoped to eat there for dinner.  Unfortunately, their restaurant was really more of a snack bar, and it had closed 15 minutes before we arrived.  We picked up a couple of things from the camp store and had peanut butter sandwiches in the car on the way back up to the John Muir Lodge instead.

In the little store at the Cedar Grove Lodge, I saw this sign.  I didn't see another one like it all summer long even though we visited MANY National Park shops.  It had never before occurred to me that shoplifting could be a federal offense, and I wondered if the sign was an effective deterrent.

We started day 21 with breakfast on the lodge’s second-floor porch which had ample seating and was peaceful and pleasant even if the view was partially of the parking lot.  Besides the porch, the lodge has indoor seating areas at both ends of the second floor which are nice for using wifi when the rest of the people in your room are trying to sleep, though we suspected that the suspiciously grungy and smelly people we saw sitting there often were actually backpackers and campers who’d sneaked in to use the free wifi.  This was the only place we encountered where the ice machine was accessible only with your room key, so we suspect that past backpackers and campers were helping themselves to ice, forcing the hotel crack down.  (We experienced a similar phenomenon at Yosemite’s campground where the showers were password protected.  But backpackers who weren’t paying to stay at the campground would just hang out by the shower doors until some kind soul held the door open for them, allowing them to grab a free shower.  I was never one of those kind souls.)

We have been blessed by ACMNP this summer!

For our first stop, we drove to the Lodegpole Amphitheater for a worship service led by A Christian Ministry in the National Parks (ACMNP).  We had been to one of their services at the Grand Canyon, and were glad to see that another group was working in Sequoia.  After a small but meaningful service, we did some laundry at the Wuksachi Lodge.  TRAVEL TIP:  Evidently, no one wants to do laundry at 10:00 on a Sunday morning, so we had the place to ourselves!  We were able to do all of our laundry at one time while we grabbed lunch at the nearby cafe.  Within an hour we were ready for the rest of our day!

Yay for empty laundry facilities!

At every Visitors' Center there is a donation box, but at this one, there was a little slot for each state so that you could see how much other people from your state had donated.

Since we had heard that parking at the General Sherman Grove was difficult, we decided to use the shuttle system for the day as we explored Sequoia National Park.  Practically speaking, shuttles are a pain.  They are crowded, slow, never there when you want them, and filled to the brim with people who don’t know what they’re doing.  But I completely understand the need to lessen the environmental impact of thousands of cars per day descending upon fragile ecosystems, so we used them frequently during our trip at several of the parks.  TRAVEL TIP #2:  Park at the Lodgepole Amphitheater and get on the shuttle there.  It is only a few steps from the Visitors' Center but your chances of getting a seat (or even standing room) are far higher at the shuttle stop at the Amphitheater than at the shuttle stop at the Visitors' Center.

There was standing room only on most of the shuttles we rode this summer.

We started with the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree in the world, and then continued on to the nearby Congress Trail which winds through sequoias named for several US Presidents as well as the House and the Senate.  The area around the General Sherman Tree is just as crowded as the General Grant Grove, so we settled for pictures at a distance.  Far fewer people do the 2.9 mile Congress Trail, but we certainly didn’t experience solitude as we hiked.  I was annoyed with the kids who were both picking at each other, so Josh likes to tell me that this was my foulest hike of the trip.  Yep, folks, we Boyds are real people who get really annoyed with each other sometimes.  It is what it is.

This was the line to take a picture in front of General Sherman.  No, thanks.

A rear view worked just fine for us.

Josh took a panoramic shot to be able to get the whole tree in.   Forgive the distortions.

I was so ready to be done, in fact, that when we reached The McKinley Tree which usually would have made me excited since Kinley is named after President McKinley, I sat on a bench in a huff while Josh took pictures of Kinley strategically covering up the Mc on the tree’s sign.  Contrary to my mood, the pictures are adorable.

Kinley blocked out the Mc in the McKinley Tree since she's named after President McKinley.  I was somewhere off in a snit.

Just one of these trees can make you feel very small, but a cluster of them and you feel minuscule.

I love this one of Knox peeking out.

In Sequoia, cars are not permitted to drive to the Tunnel Tree, the famous fallen sequoia that has an opening large enough to drive through, until after 5:45 so that a miles-long back-up doesn’t occur as tourists wait their turn to inch through the felled tree, snapping pictures all the while.  We wanted to have our turn at the iconic photo, and we decided that we could drive through the tree and then on to Moro Rock for an evening view of the canyon.  On our way there, we saw several cars pulled over to the side of the road and slowed to see what was going on.  And there, down the hill, was a bear!  Our second bear of the trip!  And she had a cub!  I watched in awe as the little black ball of fur scampered (well, actually, it kind of slid and fell) down a tree to catch up with its mama and then disappeared into the underbrush before I could snap its picture.  But we got a nice clear shot of mama bear!  Other tourists were getting out of their cars to get a better look, and I said a silent prayer that these beautifully wild creatures wouldn’t develop any habits as a result of human interaction that would force them to be relocated.  Or worse.

Hello, mama bear!

As mama bear lumbered off to join her offspring, we made our way to Tunnel Tree and were shocked to find a long line of cars waiting for their turn to drive through.  Rather than just taking a picture and moving on, people were getting the entire family out of the car and staging ten minutes’ worth of group pictures (in the car, on the car, above the car, arms up, arms linked, sitting, standing -- you get the idea) before finally moving on so that another car could take a turn.  It was very frustrating, so we were very intentional about taking our picture quickly and moving on.  Except that we couldn’t move on because the families before us had parked instead of leaving.  I guess that they wanted to be in other family members’ pictures or to watch the process or something, but we had a serious traffic jam when we were trying to get out of the way.   It was nutso.

This was at least their twentieth pose.  All those people still had to climb down and get back in their car before anyone else could go through.

For our turn, no one got out of the car but me.

We tried to move but we couldn't because of all the other cars!

Once we finally extracted ourselves from the Tunnel Tree turmoil, we drove on to Moro Rock where we had planned to watch the sunset.  We hadn’t banked on having to wait so long to drive through a tree trunk, so we missed the sunset but decided to climb up the 364 steps anyway.   As we drove to the Moro Rock parking area, we saw another bear!  And this one had two cubs!  Mama bear gave her cubs just enough freedom to wander and learn and forage on their own, so we weren’t able to get a picture of the three of them together.

Can you spot the bear's rear end?

NOTE:  Is it possible that this was the same bear who had wandered a bit farther away from her first spot and maybe I just didn’t see that second cub the first time?  Well, maybe.  But we Boyds are still counting it as a separate sighting.

Finally at Moro Rock with the sun officially set, we started our climb.  It’s not a strenuous climb, but it is a narrow staircase that makes passing people who are on their way down difficult in places.  And, while I never had a fear of heights before, once I had children, that all changed.  Now, whenever we are near a cliff or on a precipice – which has occurred frequently on this trip --my mind begins envisioning all of the horrendous ways my children could die.  I hate it.  At the top, I worked hard to tell my brain to be rational, and it helped.  Mostly.  I kind of did make Knox hold my hand or hold the guard rail pretty much any time he wanted to move from place to place on top, but I’m still calling it a win because I didn’t grab both children and sit in the center of the massive monolith, rocking back and forth in the fetal position while holding them with a death grip.

Proof that you don't have to be there at sunset to get a great shot.

Such beauty!

Can you tell how nervous I am that Josh is leaning on that railing?  

But that’s how parenting while traveling goes, I guess.  In the morning, your kids’ bickering makes you want to just walk off down the trail by yourself and let them kill each other.  But by nightfall you want to wrap them up and protect them.  So I try to take a lesson from that mama bear – give them just enough freedom to wander and learn on their own.  I’m working on it.

One Big Disappointment and Three Pleasant Surprises: A National ParkOdyssey Days 18-19

Anaheim, CA to Kings Canyon National Park via Pinnacles National Park and Fresno, CA

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Up close, you could easily see that the words "National Park" were new and that the sign used to say something else, presumably "National Monument."

We do Disney hard.  Like, early-mornings-and-late-nights-and-no-slowing-down-in-between hard.  And usually we handle it fine.  But on the heels of our Phantom Ranch journey, it was simply exhausting.  The nonstop pace of Disney paired with the sore muscles and weariness of our mule trip made for four tired Boyds.

To try to catch up on both rest and blogging, we decided to hang out at our hotel as long as we could before moving on to our next park.  The Courtyard had a water park, and Knox had been chomping at the bit to check it out since we’d checked in.  So after sleeping in, the kids enjoyed the slides, pools, and hot tub while I blogged and Josh caught up on some emails.

 

Free access to the water park was a bonus we didn't expect!

We knew we had a fairly long drive to get to our destination for the night, but we hadn’t factored in the excruciating torture of LA traffic.  We ended up taking an exit just to get a brief respite from the monotony of traveling at a crawl for what seemed like hours when it’s a bajillion degrees outside and your air conditioner is struggling to keep up.  We saw a small green sign indicating with absolutely no fanfare that Thai Town was to the right, so that’s the way we went.  It was nearly lunch time anyway, and Thai sounded pretty good. 

As we drove through the area, we passed more Thai places than we could count.  In the end, we chose Sanamluang Cafe based on exactly two things.  1) There was parking.  That may seem like a silly reason to choose a place to eat, but, as I mentioned, it was a bajillion degrees so we didn’t want to walk very far.  And we really didn’t want to get towed in LA.  And 2) we could see several seemingly-Asian people inside.  Surely they wouldn’t be eating crappy Thai. And besides, parking.

When the signs are written in Thai, chances are it's going to be tasty.

So Josh pulled off an impressive blind parallel parking job and in we went.  The first thing we noticed was the smell.  It smelled, well, right.  All totaled, Josh and I have spent 26 weeks in Thailand.  That’s more than 6 months of mostly mission work but also some vacation.  And when we’re there, we eat pretty much nothing but fabulously flavorful (and laughably cheap) authentic Thai goodness.  And, generally speaking, Thai food in the US isn’t the same.  But this place smelled promising.

If you find yourself in LA, head to Thai town and look for this place.  

After the Thai server seated us and left us to check out the menu, we noticed reviews from both the New York Times and the LA Times hanging on the wall.  We were reading them when another customer told us that everything on the menu is delicious. 

My gold standard for Thai food is cashew chicken, and the best cashew chicken on the planet in my opinion is served by a woman named Mai Porn in Phuket in Thailand.  She does this thing where the liquids she uses to make the dish mostly evaporate but they also caramelize onto the cashews.  It’s like culinary magic.  The result is a much drier dish than every other version of cashew chicken I’ve ever had, and it is beyond delicious.  For years, I haven’t ordered cashew chicken anywhere else because it just disappoints me.  Cashews and chicken swimming in sauce are what I always get in the US, and then I just get irritated with myself for ordering it in the first place.

I wish now that I had tried the cashew chicken at Sanamluang Café because everything else was exactly right.  It was easily the best Thai food I have ever had outside of Thailand.  Kinley and Josh drank two Thai iced teas each, the kids shared two orders of sticky rice, and our family shared chicken fried rice, pad Thai, and pad kra paow (tiny pieces of chicken with garlic and Thai basil).  I find myself still daydreaming about how good it was.  It might even be good enough to make me willing to fight LA traffic again.

Notice how finely minced the chicken is in the Pad Kra Paow.  That's EXACTLY how it is in Thailand, but I haven't ever seen it minced this way in the US before.

As we were leaving, one of the servers struck up a conversation with us.  When she learned we’d spent so much time in Thailand, she perked up quite a bit.  We talked about how Thai strangers used to pick up my little blond-haired-blue-eyed babies without permission in the grocery store in Thailand and how I got used to it very quickly, taking it as quite a compliment in the end.  We talked about the death of King Bhumibol (aka King Rama IX) and her pilgrimage back to Thailand to pay her respects to her beloved king.  We talked about how much my kids love sticky rice with grilled pork on a stick for breakfast when we’re in Thailand and how hard it is to find sticky rice that isn’t sweetened on Thai menus in the Midwest.  By the end, we felt like friends, and she hugged me as we left.  Food truly brings people together.

Back in the sweltering hot car, we prepared ourselves to rejoin LA traffic.  On a whim, we decided to make an impromptu college visit to Pepperdine in Malibu.  Kinley says she wants to go to Lipscomb, but since she’d heard about Pepperdine for years without ever having seen the campus, we thought a quick stop would be fun.  A fire burning in the nearby canyon meant that the campus was under emergency procedures, so we weren’t able to do much more than a drive through.  But it was long enough for Kinley to see how beautiful the campus is and to snap a few pictures of her with beautiful views of the Pacific in the background.

 

Kinley in front of the Pepperdine baseball field

Since we were so close to the beach, we decided to stop for just a few minutes to dip our toes in the cold water.  Later, we saw a fruit stand beside the road and picked up some strawberries, cherries, and cucumbers which we munched on as we traveled.

 

Knox wanted to avoid sandy feet, but the rest of us didn't care.

We drove on.  And on.  And on.  And we finally arrived in King City, CA, well after dark.  Our stay at the Days Inn there was by far the least comfortable of the trip, and the lady at the front desk was less than friendly.  We were happy to head on the next morning toward the nation’s newest and fifty-ninth national park, Pinnacles.

Pinnacles was formerly a national monument but was upgraded to a national park in 2013.  After visiting it, we’re not sure why.  I mean, it’s a nice park with trails and interesting scenery, but it had a definite state park feel to us.  We kept thinking about Indiana state parks that we’ve visited that are just as lovely, if not more so.  We eventually decided that this place got promoted because it supposedly has the highest concentration of California condors in the world, but we didn’t see a single one while we were there.

We ate our Thai leftovers as part of our picnic lunch.

We had a picnic lunch and then struck out on a trail that took us to a reservoir after passing through several talus caves.  These caves are different from most caves because they are formed when huge boulders fall against other rocks leaving a little space.  Most of the deep ones were closed to prevent the spread of white nose syndrome in bats, but a couple of the small ones were open for peeks inside.  The reservoir was cool and we saw a couple of snakes swimming in there, but it wasn’t even a natural feature!  It was built by the CCC years ago.

 

You can see here how the talus caves are formed by boulders falling against other boulders.

The reservoir was picturesque even though it was manmade.

One of the little snakes is visible under the rock in the middle of the picture.

You may be thinking, “Two paragraphs?  Really?  That’s all she has to say about this national park?”  And to you I’d say, “I wish I had more to say.  But I don’t.”  The kids earned their Junior Ranger badges, and we now have a new family joke.  Anytime we’re reviewing our experience so far or telling people we’ve met about what we’re doing, Knox loves to joke that Pinnacles is a must-see.  Or if we do a trail that is hugely popular but which we decide is overrated, we all now compare it to Pinnacles.  In short, Pinnacles doesn’t live up to its name.

 

Taking the Junior Ranger pledge once again

So on to Kings Canyon we went.  To get there, we drove through Fresno.  It was around dinner time, and we also needed some groceries since breakfast wasn’t included in our next three nights’ stay at the park lodge.  We had no idea where to eat in Fresno, so we tried Google and Yelp which, unfortunately, kept sending us to food trucks.  While I was game to try that, Josh refused to eat at a picnic table in a strip mall parking lot when it was over 100 degrees outside.  Consequently, we drove around Fresno for a while before stumbling upon a place called The Grocery Outlet.  Imagine if the food sections of Big Lots, Ollie’s, and Aldi had a baby.  That’s Grocery Outlet.  We bought Flips yogurts for $.69, cereal for $.99, and large Frappucinos for $1.99.  Frankly, The Grocery Outlet was more exciting than Pinnacles.

From there, we drove past a place called Las Brisas with signs that promised seafood and tacos.  It fulfilled Josh’s #1 requirement of not eating in a parking lot, so in we went.  And we were so glad we did.  We tried the shrimp ceviche and the chicken tacos which were both fresh and delicious.  They even made a shrimp quesadilla for Josh even though it wasn’t on the menu.  About the time our food arrived, we realized that it was karaoke night en espanol when several of the other patrons began belting out their favorite tunes.  The funny thing was that the singers didn’t even leave their seats most of the time.  The DJ would bring the microphone over to the singer’s table!  It was a charming cultural experience even though we didn’t know any of the songs and couldn’t understand the lyrics at all.  I loved this place so much that I signed up with Yelp! Just to be able to give them a positive review.  And while I was at it, I waxed eloquent about Sanamluang Café, too. 

I'm so glad we found this yummy little place to eat in Fresno!

We checked into our room at the John Muir Lodge late that evening.  We had to take in all food and even all scented things like soaps or bath gels because bears have been known to break into cars when they pick up on the scents in the lodge parking lot.  Even though Pinnacles had been a disappointment, our three pleasant surprises (Sanamluang Café, The Grocery Outlet, and Las Brisas) had made the journey to our tenth park a relatively positive experience.  And the next day would be sure to bring even more surprises.

Note:  It only now has occurred to me that all three pleasant surprises were completely food related.  Hmmm…..

Disneyland Isn’t a National Park: A National Park Odyssey Days 16-17

Disneyland Resort, Anaheim, CA

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Disneyland is a nationally-known park so it totally counts, right?

In our experience, many people think of Disney parks as the antithesis of nature.  And in most ways, they’re probably right.  But to us, Disney-fication is not a pejorative.  It’s an assurance of excellent customer service and a consistently fun experience.  Josh and I have visited every Disney park in the world (there are twelve of them), and we enjoy each of them.  Since we were planning to be in California anyway, we made Disneyland a stop on our trip.

The castle at this park is so small that you can hardly see it in our picture!

Our first day in the park was a Tuesday which is a great day to visit a Disney park; it’s not too crowded since it’s the middle of the week.  We did Disneyland on that day and Disney’s California Adventure the next day.  Unlike Orlando, the parks here are very close together which makes hopping between parks very easy.  You don’t need to take a shuttle or bus; you just walk across a plaza.  That said, with only two days, we decided not to get park hopper tickets.  It would have cost us an additional $180, and we decided instead just to get tickets for one day in each park.  If we had been planning to be there for three days, we would have gotten hoppers.

We started our day by getting to the security line 30 minutes before the official park opening time.  Guests of the three Disney hotels and guests who buy at least a three-day pass get an extra hour of time in the parks in the morning, so we weren’t the first people in line by far.  But getting there before most of the non-hotel-guests arrive is still an advantage.

Disneyland is supposedly transitioning to a new FastPass system, and we were there during the first week of the transition.  They were using a system that was kind of a legacy FastPass/Magic Band hybrid called MaxPass, and people were completely confused.  We figured it out quickly, but there were still long bottlenecks at the FastPass entrances because of people who didn’t get it.  We were able to work things well enough that we ended up getting ten FastPasses each that first day.  Not bad!  We were able to get on rides like Storybookland, the Matterhorn, and the Jungle Cruise and attractions like The Enchanted Tiki Room without a FastPass in 15 minutes or less, so we got to do pretty much everything we wanted to do that day without waiting very long at all. 

The new MaxPass system loads your FastPasses onto your ticket but also gives you a paper receipt as a reminder.  The receipts ARE NOT the FastPass, and this was super confusing to other people who kept trying to pull them out to get in line.  The plus is that you get to keep the receipts as souvenirs.

Our longest wait was to meet Moana.  Every time we checked, it was a 45-minute wait, but we managed to find a time when the line was down to 35 minutes.  She spent a lot of time talking to the kids, so we were glad we had waited to meet her.

Moana signed autograph books and chatted with the kids.

2017 is the 50^th anniversary of The Pirates of the Caribbean, and the park had added special foods in New Orleans Square to commemorate the occasion.  We had a delicious lunch at the French Market and tried the Jolly Roger Punch, the Buccaneer Pulled Pork Sandwich, and the Lost Treasure Beignets.  Kinley had the jambalaya, I had the red beans and rice with andouille sausage, and Knox had the pasta kids’ meal.  And later, while listening to the Disneyland band play, we tried the Pirates’ anniversary Golden Churro which had lemon-flavored sugar dusted on the outside. It was delish!  The food at French Market was good enough to be table service, but it was actually counter service and therefore much less expensive than a table service lunch would have been. 

French Market is now our favorite counter service restaurant at Disneyland.

The special beignets and churros for the Pirates anniversary were yummy!

Speaking of expensive table service, nearby in a tucked-away corner of New Orleans Square is Club 33, a members-only restaurant with a years-long wait list for new members.  We ate there as guests of friends of friends (Thanks, Meg!) in 2013 and were told then that a complete remodel was about to occur.  I went looking for the new entrance on this trip and found it!  There is no sign explaining what wonders wait behind the door, and most people walk by without even noticing it.  If anyone ever offers to take you, you should definitely splurge and go. 

Notice the easily-missed 33 above the door.  There is no other sign.  The picture on the right is of the doorbell.

Later that night, we had a reservation to eat dinner inside Pirates of the Caribbean at Blue Bayou.  We had pre-ordered the three-course prix fixe menu which came with reservations in a special seating area for viewing the Main Street Electrical Parade.  I ordered the surf and turf, Kinley got the salmon, Josh got the ribeye, and Knox got to order the kid’s steak even though he was a year too old thanks to our kind server.  Desserts included crème brulee, a hazelnut cake, a turtle-shaped mousse, and a Mickey-shaped mousse for Knox. 

The glow necklaces were a fun bonus.

We would never have ordered this much food if we hadn't signed up for the prix fixe that included parade seating, but it was yummy!

We were given light-up necklaces and special tickets to get us into the special seating area an hour later.  The food was good, and we love the atmosphere including watching the boats float by at Blue Bayou.  When we arrived at the roped-off area for parade viewing, it felt special to get to go into the reserved space.  There were other people there, of course, but we didn’t have to mark our territory in order to be able to see.  We had a front-row seat.  Was it worth the $65 per adult price tag?  I think it was, but Josh might not.  He thought our much-cheaper lunch was significantly tastier.

We had prime seats right in front of the Disneyland Railroad station.

This parade is a Disney classic and is no longer featured at Walt Disney World.

The next morning we headed straight for the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride at California Adventure.  It’s really just a re-branding of the old Tower of Terror, but they did a nice job of changing the story line and adding some fun details.  We got there at opening, but the line just to get a FastPass wrapped all the way back near the entrance to the park.  We followed the masses and ended up having to wait about 20 minutes to grab a FastPass.  If you go any time soon, expect a similar wait.  And if you don’t get there early enough to get a FastPass before they’re all given out, expect a three hour wait.

Notice the taped lines on the ground for the FastPass line to snake around several times before getting to the actual kiosks to get a FastPass.

California Adventure is a more sprawling park than Disneyland, and we had lots of rides on our must-do list which made for a lot of criss-crossing back and forth the park.  Mickey’s Fun Wheel, California Screamin’, Toy Story Mania, Soarin’, Radiator Springs Racers, and The Avengers’ Training Academy were all things we wanted to do for sure.  I had wanted to see the Frozen show, but people were lined up at 9:00 for the noon show so I could tell that wasn’t going to happen.  We were able to do everything on our must-do list and many more things during our day, but I will admit that this ark was much harder for us to do.  Attractions were constantly breaking down which would mess up our timing, and we found the app to be unreliable as well.  Poor Josh hiked back and forth across the park checking to see if Toy Story Mania was up and running more times than I can count.

The Paradise Pier section of Disney's California Adventure has Mickey's Fun Wheel and California Screamin'.

For our second special dining experience, we had booked lunch at Ariel’s Grotto.  We did this in 2013 as well, and it’s a great way to meet Disney princesses.  Even though we had a reservation, we still had a 15 minute wait, but having the princesses come straight to your table for meet and greets is a serious advantage over standing in line to meet them.  Cinderella was especially sweet and spent a long time talking to the kids about their interesting and unusual names.  She told us that twice she had met guests who were actually named Cinderella!

Knox is always a really good sport about meeting the princesses, bless his heart.

Because we had just been on Route 66 in Holbrook, Arizona, which was the inspiration for the Cars movies, visiting the Radiator Springs section of the park was extra special this trip.  Seeing the Cozy Cone after just having seen the Wigwam Hotel and looking at the Disney versions of the canyons after just having driven through the real thing brought the movie to life for us in a whole new way.  It is definitely our favorite area of the park, especially at night when Flo’s V-8 is all lit up with neon.  We’ll be driving through the real Monument Valley when we head through Utah and Nevada, and I know we’ll be thinking of Radiator Springs when we do.

Cars Land is our fave!

Later that evening we watched the World of Color light and water show.  It was great, but we were glad we weren’t in the front few rows since there was a lot of overspray from the fountains.  In my opinion, this show was better than the fountain show in Las Vegas at the Bellaggio, but, of course, I love the music from Disney movies which this had as its soundtrack.

When we do Disney, we do Disney hard – park opening to park closing with no rest in between.  So we were exhausted when we returned to our room at the end of the second day.  But the coolest part of Disneyland?  Walking in the place that Walt Disney actually walked himself.  Walt died before Disney World was completed, but at Disneyland you can know that when you’re walking right down the middle of Main Street USA, Walt walked there, too.  And while admittedly that’s not anything close to the natural wonders of America’s national parks, it’s still pretty stinking cool. 

Disney Love!

Route 66 Round 2 and Joshua Tree National Park: A National Park OdysseyDays 14 ½ and 15

Grand Canyon to Anaheim, CA via Kingman, AZ and Joshua Tree National Park

Want to listen to our podcast about this park?  Click here!

As we sat eating our post-mule-ride ice cream, several of the rim-to-rim hikers who had been at Phantom Ranch with us walked (staggered?) by.  They had just finished their epic journey and looked far worse for the wear than I felt.  

       

After saying goodbye to my Sheldon (my assigned mule on our Grand Canyon overnight), Josh, the kids, and I treated ourselves to some ice cream at Bright Angel Lodge before loading our trail-weary, dust-covered selves into the Volvo and headed to Kingman, AZ for the night.  Kingman is another stop on what used to be Route 66, and so we were expecting the same adorable, nostalgia-evoking feel of Holbrook, AZ.  Kingman did not live up to the bar set by Holbrook.

 

I had to get a picture of these tourists on the way out of the Grand Canyon.  They apparently missed all of the signs instructing visitors to stay at least 50 feet away from wildlife.  They're lucky that elk didn't decide to use those antlers.

Mule riding is hard work, people.

We ate dinner at a restaurant in a converted gas station called Mr. D’z Route 66 Diner that was supposed to be a hot stop on the modern Route 66, and it was less than awesome.  The décor was cute, but the food was only average.  To be fair, it was a Sunday evening when we arrived in town, but the place just looked dead.  There were many vacant businesses, and the motels looked more dilapidated than historic.  We were happy to move on the next morning.

 

Oprah Winfrey evidently ate here, but we were underwhelmed.

The next day proved to be yet another scorcher, so we knew that our visit to park #8 of our journey, Joshua Tree National Park, wouldn’t be a thorough one.  We wouldn’t be able to hike very far since we’d end up arriving in the middle of the day after our drive from Kingman. 

This park was a special one; it’s the only park on our whole itinerary that was a repeat for all four of us.  In 2013, our family took a Spring Break trip that included stops at Joshua Tree, Death Valley, and Disneyland, and Knox had fallen in love with the rocky landscape and Dr. Seussian yuccas of Joshua Tree.  As a result, he’d chosen that park as the subject of his national park research project when he was in fourth grade in my class.  He had created a diorama of the tallest Joshua Tree, and now he wanted to see it for himself.

 

Knox and Kinley earned their Junior Ranger badges for this park in 2013.

Joshua Tree has two entrances, and we weren’t sure which one was closer to the tallest tree.  A Google search wasn’t helpful, so I tried a phone call to the visitors’ center.  Each call resulted in an assurance from an answering machine that my call would be returned within 24 hours.  Since we were only two hours away at this point, that wasn’t helpful either.  I decided to try tweeting my question to the park on Twitter since I’d seen that many of the parks have very active Twitter accounts.  Unfortunately, even my tweet wasn’t answered by the park until three days later, and the answer given wasn’t even related to the tree we wanted to see.

We ended up choosing poorly (I always hear the voice of the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when I write that), and choosing the south entrance near the Cottonwood Visitors’ Center instead of the 29 Palms entrance.  We made the best of it and enjoyed the interactive exhibits in the air-conditioned visitors’ center after getting directions to the tallest tree from the rangers.  (To be honest, even they gave us slightly incorrect directions, but we found it anyway.)

 

Just stopping long enough to take this picture was almost more heat than we could handle.

Knox was excited to find the tallest tree which he had represented in his diorama in 4th grade.  The tree is 43 feet tall.

Family picture at the Cholla Cactus Garden

Note:  If you want to find the tree from the Cottonwood Visitors’ Center, take the Pinto Basin Road past the Cholla Cactus Garden (which is worth a stop if you have time and it’s not a million degrees outside).  Continue on past the Belle camping area and take the next road to your left, Queen Valley Road.  You will pass Jumbo Rocks on the left (which is Knox’s favorite place to get out and climb on the rocks – again when it’s not a million degrees).  Continue on Queen Valley Road and look for an informational placard on the right side of the road.  It’s titled “The Adventurous Yucca.”  The tallest tree will be a few feet further on your left, just beside the road.  It doesn’t have a placard or anything.  If you get to the turn for Sheep Pass on your left, you’ve gone too far.  (The rangers told us it was between Sheep Pass and Ryan Mountain, but it wasn’t.  We had to turn around and go back.)

This is the placard that is on the right just before the tallest tree is on your left.

The park was nearly empty because of the high temperatures.

Further down the road, Knox just couldn’t resist an opportunity to do a few minutes’ worth of climbing over the enormous, rust-colored boulders, so he and Josh ventured out into the heat while Kinley and I stayed in the relative coolness of the Volvo.  On their way to Hemingway Buttress, neither of them could resist an opportunity for some boy humor.

Boy humor

 

KNox got to do a little bit of climbing and reported that the rocks weren't as hot to the touch as he expected.

On our way out of the park, we tried a couple of other local candy bars we’d picked up along the way.  The Rocky Road was disappointing.  It didn’t have enough nuts and was 98% marshmallow.  (That may be a slight exaggeration, but the proportions were definitely off.)  

The CupOGold (apart from the obviously missing apostrophe in its name) was delicious and we would like to try it in an environment where it is not a million degrees outside since the marshmallow part of the filling melted and made quite a mess.  The ratio of chocolate to filling was much better on this one.

We continued on to the Courtyard Anaheim Theme Park Entrance and arrived by late afternoon.  This is a Marriott property, so we stayed for free with our points, and it was perfect for us.  There are only three Disney hotel options in Anaheim, and they are all prohibitively expensive.  This hotel was still easily walkable to the parks, and we had two queen sized beds, two bunk beds, a small fridge, a full bath, and an extra shower.  The kids were thrilled to get their own beds for the night!  Knox took the top bunk while Kinley snagged the second queen.

We only bought two-day tickets to the park, so we decided to check out the Downtown Disney area for dinner.  There was live music, a huge World of Disney store, a build-your-own radio controlled carstore (kind of like Build-A-Bear for bigger kids), and a wide variety of food options.  We noticed that while churros are available only in Frontierland at Disney World, they are everywhere at Disneyland.  We saw two carts selling them at Downtown Disney, and there were multiple flavor options as well.  (Fruity Pebbles is apparently their best-selling flavor, but that wasn’t a temptation for me.)  We passed on the churros and instead grabbed dinner before heading back to the hotel.  Nothing about the way we do Disney is slow-paced and relaxing, so we needed to rest up to be ready for days 16-17!