Kings Canyon, CA

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

We are on our way to Kings Canyon.  We've been told it is totally different from what we've seen so far.

As we headed on our way, we kept going up into the Sierra Mountain range.  It was gorgeous!

We got up to nearly 7000 ft elevation.

That is the windy road we will be taking down into Kings Canyon.

Tic took this panoramic from up top.  The white line you see between the mountains is actually the Kings River.

This picture shows both the river on the left and the windy road down on the right. 

We kept stopping to take pictures.  It was all so beautiful.  We read that this canyon is deeper than the Grand Canyon.

This rugged light colored mountain has a white spot on it.  To me it looked like a BIG bird pookied on it.  :o)

We finally got down to the Kings river.  This was our first stop by the river.  We decided to have our picnic lunch here.

Another beautiful spot by the Kings River.

Next we came to a waterfall.

This is the Grizzly Waterfall.  

Here we are standing on a bridge over the South Fork of the Kings River.  This is nearly the end of the road.  Look how clear the water is all the way to the bottom of the river.  Notice on the left side of the picture in the river what looks like a circle of rocks.  See below.

Here is a close up of that circle of rocks in the river.  Looks like someone must have arranged them when the water was low.  Now it is completely covered by at least 3 feet of water.

Tic was hoping to show some ripples around the rocks below.  I think it is a cool picture.  Great job!!

A bit further down the road was the Roaring River that flowed into the Kings River.

This picture is below the waterfall on the Roaring River.

I am standing at the Roaring River Waterfall.

This is the Roaring River Waterfall in action.  Impressive.  See the mist getting sucked out?

These are the mountains just across from the Roaring River.  They look so rugged and awesome.

More awesome mountains.  We finally reached the end of the road.  We had to leave the same way we came in.  Dusty drove in and Tic drove out so we both got time to look around.

Once we left the park, Dusty wanted to take a scenic route home.  Let me tell you CA 245 does not have a straight section longer than 50 feet for 31 miles.  This is an example.  It would make a great motorcycle ride.

When we got further down off the mountains, the foothills were brown again.

The drought here is so bad that the ranchers cannot put as many cattle per acre as normal.