All's Well That Ends Well

(Visalia, CA) Wow, what a rockin’ and rollin’ night. I don’t know the exact strength of the winds here but they are strong. In fact, when we got up to get ready to leave this morning, the campground owner came by and told us there were wind advisories for oversize vehicles on the freeway we’d be on so to be careful and be ready to have to pull over for quite some time. As it turned out, while the drive was a little harried, we didn’t have to stop.

We pulled into Visalia, CA – which is about an hour or so from Sequoia National Park – about 1:00 in the afternoon. We thought this would give us a fair amount of time to go do a short hike.

Mike got out all his trusty maps he’d gotten off the internet and we set off for a fun afternoon. Instead we drove and drove and drove up and down and around all these winding roads out in the middle of nowhere but we never found the hike that was mentioned. After close to two hours of driving we gave up and headed back. Needless to say, we were all very disappointed.

When we got down to the bottom of the mountain, Mike decided to take a slightly different way home. On the way, we came across a park so we decided to stop and at least let the dogs stretch their legs a little before going back to the RV.

What a pleasant surprise! This park was just perfect and the weather was nice and warm.. It was right on a river and while there were a number of people here, they all seemed to stay at the very front section of the park. The front section of the park was full of HUGE boulders – in fact, a lot of the rocks were so big you would consider them more slabs of rock rather than individual boulders. People were having picnics on the rocks and playing around on them.

Since there were so many people there we pretty much avoided that area and headed on down the river a bit.






We didn’t see a soul from then on and had the entire place to ourselves. We let the girls off leash as usual but they stuck close as they usually do in a new place. Slugger enjoyed swimming although it was really cold. Wazzu did her usual toodling around in the water.

After we walked as far as we could next to the river (boulders got too rough) we headed up the hill to walk along the path.



The scenery from anywhere in this entire park was just beautiful.




In fact, we even found a piece of property that we would LOVE to buy – of course there is no way we could ever afford it but it was fun to dream. If you look in the distance in the below picture you'll see a patch of green grass on a hill. There is a beautiful house on top of the hill.



To the left of the hill with the house is this MUCH larger hill. You can't see the hill with the house in this picture - it is just to the right of this picture.

This picture shows the entirety of the large hill.



We thought this was such a cool property. Very secluded, on a river, and a huge hill for the dogs to hike around every day. Okay, enough of the daydreaming.

Anyway, we walked a ways until we could find a way back down to the river. The current was super strong here. Wazzu pretty much just swam in place and even Slugger had to put up quite a fight to actually make much progress. But they had a good time swimming especially when I found this huge stick for them to chase. I don’t know why but the bigger the stick the better.

They even had fun on land with the stick as both Wazzu and Slugger wanted to claim it as their own. Sparkie tried to join in but Wazzu let her know that she wasn’t allowed in this game.



So Sparkie went down to the water and did a little bit of snorkeling to find her own little twig.



She had to keep her nose under water quite a while so she had to blow bubbles so she could stay under longer. Smart girl.



They still weren't done playing tug of war so Sparkie amused herself by playing in the dirt.



On the way back the dogs were all wet so they were very frisky. The girls were running around so quickly they really stirred up the dust.



We went through this meadow where the grass was very golden, soft, and about knee high. The dogs absolutely loved this grass. Wazzu and Sparkie played tag in the grass for about 15 minutes. Mike and I had a great time watching them as Wazzu doesn’t play with Sparkie all that much but when she does, Sparkie is in heaven.








Sparkie tucked her bottom and run around and around this way and that.







Slugger tried to join in once in a while but it’s really hard to play that game on leash.



What a great find! And a nice way to end a day that started out with a lot of frustration. As they say, all’s well that ends well.

Debbie
4/9/07