Southern California: National Forests Road Trip (Part 1)

Hello everyone! Hope you had a good holiday weekend a few weeks ago. Instead of celebrating the 4th, Jay and I enjoyed the ability to do a short road-trip to Southern California National Forests during this pandemic while still social distancing, wearing masks, and limiting our time in public buildings and places.

Thank you for waiting an extra day for this post. If you’re curious about my neck and shoulder issues visit this post. Every few weeks I seem to hit a snag where something happens and makes the pain skyrocket. Up until now I’ve felt I haven’t been able to afford full time physical therapy and instead have been taking advice and guidance from my physical therapists while using my condo associations gym and then every few weeks I meet with them as a check in. With the current rise in COVID-19 cases in Arizona though, my gym has closed. I’ve been debating whether to do a fundraiser on facebook to raise funds so that I can afford doing in person PT with my therapist at least 3 times a week, but have felt that I wasn’t really worthy of a fundraiser. I don’t have cancer, or any other disease, and the money isn’t going to an organization that does research for such diseases so I’ve felt like I’d be taking advantage. Not sure if I’ll go through with it or not, still deciding but thank you for bearing with my thought dump here and thanks for taking the time to read this long paragraph. Now I’ll move on to the road-trip adventure!

In my last post I revealed that I ended up joining Jay on his road trip to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Forests and explained why it was such a tough decision to make. If you’d like to re-read, or read for the first time, about this decision, read the first few paragraphs of the Mount Greylock Camping Trip post and the Maui, HI: Haleakalā backpacking trip to Palikū Cabin post. If you don’t want to do this (which I can understand, sometimes I don’t even want to go to the extra effort for something…), the short version is that I was pretty sure that if I slept on my basic blow up Thermarest for a whole week, my shoulder and neck would start hurting badly and I’d end up being in some serious pain 700 miles from home. Thankfully though I was able to order an Exped MegaMat very last minute and join Jay on the trip!

Our trip technically began Saturday morning at 7am when we woke up and loaded the last few things into the car. However, the entire previous day was spent loading gear in to the car, food shopping, and planning meals. We broke up the long 12 hour drive to Sequoia and Kings Canyon from Flagstaff by staying a little over half way for the night so that we’d only have to drive 7 hours that day and 5 hours the next. The original plan was to stay somewhere in the Lake Isabella region, but we had underestimated how busy this area would be for camping since it was 4th of July, and ended up going a bit more north to the Johnsondale town region as per a rangers suggestion.

It was starting to get dark once we had arrived to the area because we technically ended up driving for close to 9 or 10 hours due to driving around Lake Isabella trying to find a campsite, but really it’s only 8 hours from Flagstaff to where we camped. After randomly driving down a dirt road, we finally found a pull off/campsite- that people had obviously used before, due to there being a fire pit- next to a stream with a water fall we went over to look at before dinner. When I was meal planning for this trip, I decided we’d have sandwiches this first night because they don’t take too long to make and I figured that we wouldn’t have the patience to make a more complicated meal. I was happy that I planned it out this way since we were both getting hangry and it was getting dark and late as we made our meal. After dinner we set up our sleep systems and sat on our Kelty Love Seat while watching the stars before heading to bed. As mentioned before, Jay is not a fan of sleeping in the car anymore on our bed frame, so instead he’s been sleeping in his tent while I sleep on the frame with the recently bought Exped Megamat. I’m glad to say that during the entire trip, the Exped Megamat was very comfortable and didn’t cause me any additional neck, shoulder, or hip pain. Below are photos of our first nights campsite and the view while standing on the boulder in the back center of the campsite photo. Photo Credit: Sarah Marsh

The next morning we packed up our gear, filled up our camelbacks with stream water filtered by the sawyer mini filter, and started driving. Because we ended up heading more north for our first night campsite, our second day drive only ended up being just over 4 hours. Before we headed out of the mountains to the west side of the sierras, and then back into the mountains through the Sequoia National Park, we first stopped at the Trail of a Hundred Giants to walk among the towering Sequoias and then after stopped at the Dome Rock that looked over the south section of the Sequoia National Forest. Photos below of a few sequoias from our walk and me sitting on Dome Rock. Photo Credit: Sarah Marsh and Jonathan Berkun.

After our walk and lookout stop we drove out of the mountains through Porterville and then up through the Sequoia National Park. The drive has many switchbacks and I suggest if you get car sick, you may want to be the one who drives it and take some sort of motion sickness medication. The views are spectacular as you zig zag your way up into the mountains. Because the National Park wasn’t our destination, we didn’t take the time for a hike but did stop at a pull off about half way through that had a rough trail that led you down to a river swimming hole with a small waterfall. It was upwards of 90 degrees that day so the cool water felt amazing.

After spending some time floating and cooling off we got back in the car and made our way up to our next campsite. Campers are only allowed to stay in developed campgrounds in the park, and we wanted to be closer to Hume Lake, so we stayed down a forest road where others had done dispersed camping previously in the Sequoia National Forest only 10 minutes by car to Hume Lake Recreation Area. When Jay had chosen this area to camp in prior to the trip he hadn’t realized how long it takes to drive to the trailhead for his backpacking trip because the mileage isn’t very long but the time it takes to drive is because it’s full of switchbacks and elevation change. After some debating, we decided to stay at the site for two nights anyways because it was such a nice area and I wasn’t going to mind getting up early to do the drive to drop him off. The site is filled with scattered boulders right next to a meadow. It’s somewhat near the road but the noise of vehicles wasn’t bothersome because the road wasn’t too frequented while we were there. We got to the site with plenty of daylight left so we had time to make a more complicated dinner. Jay made quesadillas while I ate a pesto pasta. Soon after dinner the sun went down so Jay crawled into his tent and I climbed into the car and we drifted off to sleep eager for our exploration of the Hume Lake Recreation Area.

Next week I’ll dive into the day Jay and I spent at the Hume Lake Recreation Area, the following day where I drop Jay off at the trailhead and decide where to go while he backpacks, and then the first day I spend all on my own! I’ve decided to recall this adventures events with three parts because so much was done during this trip and SO many photos were taken. Thank you for waiting a few extra days for this weeks post, see you all next week!

Mahalo and Kia Ora!