Sequoia National Park

What a summer it's been! Prior to June I hadn't been to a single National Park in my life. Now that summer is over I've seen four of them: Grand Canyon, Glacier, Sequoia, and King's Canyon.

All of them are beautiful for their own grand reasons. A few weekends ago I was traveling through Fresno and Bakersfield on a Whitworth recruiting trip. Since I had a free weekend to spend in the area I decided to head up to the mountains and take advantage of the opportunity to see the Sequoias. True to what people say, sequoia trees are BIG!!! These two pictures give some good perspective, even though they were nowhere near the size of the largest ones I saw.

True to what people often say, the Sequoia trees are BIG!!! Neither of these were the biggest ones I saw, but they do give some good perspective on how massive these beastly plants really are.

I did two dayhikes along the way and had some amazingly good weather to soak up the scenery. I packed my short time in the Park full by covering two day hikes and 25 trail miles. I also managed to tour the Crystal Cave and check out the General Sherman tree as well.

Here are a few of my favorite pics from along the way:

Lastly...after being disappointed by not seeing a single bear in Glacier National Park in four days, I saw three black bears in two days at Sequoia. Here is the best picture I got (didn't want to get too close!).

Glacier National Park

For those of you who think that all I do is post blogs about backpacking trips...I promise that other things will come soon. Fall is just around the corner and that means that I'll soon trade out my hiking boots for some other things...I'm just trying to squeeze out some more time in the woods with the last few summer weekends that we have left to enjoy.

A few weekends ago Joelle and I went to Glacier National Park with our good friends, Asher & Mia Ernst. We did a 26 mile backpacking loop over the course of three days. For those familiar with the park we started at Many Glacier, went over Ptarmigan Pass to Elizabeth Lake, and then over Red Gap Pass to Poia Lake on our second day. The last day we completed the loop by returning to Many Glacier.

The scenery along the way was epic and around every bend was another breathtaking view of some of the wildest places on North America. I took almost 200 pictures trying to capture the beauty of it. Although that can never come close, these are my favorite shots from the trip.