What time to leave Anaheim for King's Canyon?

[kailuagirl]

We did this trip last October, spent a week at GCH in Disneyland then went up to Sequoia. We left DL in the afternoon after lunch. I don't recall hitting much traffic at all. It was a week day. And spent the night in Tulare at a Best Western, restocked supplies. Got up really early in the morning and then went into Sequoia and spent 3 nights at Wuksachi. It takes a long time to get from the entrance to the hotel. So be prepared. I wouldn't really want to drive that at night so make sure you get there in the daylight. It was breath taking when you drive in. The 3 of us were screaming with excitement in the car at all the trees. Being from Hawaii, we've never seen anything like it. They just kept getting bigger and bigger. It was amazing. Plus it is a winding road, so be careful. The way we did it was perfect. We hit a couple of the parts on the way to the hotel so we wouldn't have to backtrack to much. Let me know if you want any more info. It was so fun. Now for food in Sequoia, It is really limited. So take plenty at water, snacks and drinks. I saw lots of families with coolers of sandwich things and such. Would totally do that next time. It seemed like we never really had a good meal there at all, except for breakfast at the hotel.

 

[robert_j]

Thank you for the detailed response! I am so glad to hear the positive report -- it am becoming more excited about the Yosemite/Sequoia leg of the trip than the Disney pars! It sounds like traffic really is not an issue, but leaving early enough to get to the lodge before nightfall might be. The food tips are good as well.

What I am having trouble balancing is how much food to bring into the park v. how much not to bring in because of bears and critters. I am thinking we probably can't leave any food in the cars, right? That might be okay when we are at the hotel but not if we want to go on a hike.... So I am not sure how to manage that.

 

[kailuagirl]

For your food. There are big bear boxes everywhere needed when you park. There are several in the parking lots. If you see one, take all your food and scented items, i.e. lotion, hand sanitizer, etc. out of the car and put it in. Everyone shares the boxes so you can't lock your things inside. Even at the hotel, they tell you to leave no food in your car overnight so we had to lug it all in. There are places to eat, but not much. By the hotel there was a pizza burger place, but it closes early and the hotel restaurant was just okay. Breakfast was much better than dinner. There is a free coffee set up in the lobby of the hotel in the mornings also. For hikes, you can get little bear boxes to fit in your backpack if needed. The rangers have them. We never did any hikes longer than a couple hours so didn't really take any food other than maybe a pack of nuts of something. You might be fine with the food options there, but we found it very limited. At the minimum, take water, fruit and snacks.

We only saw one bear there. And we looked the whole time. It was on our way out, we were driving back down and it was right there sitting on the side of the road near a tree.

Oh, and in case you don't know, when you check into the lodge, don't take your luggage or anything out then. The hotel rooms are across the street in separate buildings. You check in, get back in your car and drive to the rooms.

If you have kids, make sure to do the Junior Park Ranger. So fun! And go up Moro Rock. So Beautiful!

 

[robert_j]

We do Acadia National Park and the Cape Cod National seashore every year, so we are very familiar with the national park system, but not bears! (Not in those parks.) Glad to hear that there is a Junior Ranger program at Sequoia as well. My daughter does it every year at the other parks, so I am sure she will love to do it there too. I might also get a national park passport now that we are starting to branch out of our "home" parks.

It's great to have all of this information about Sequoia. Thank you again. I have done a lot of reading/planning for Yosemite but not much for Sequoia yet. We are only there for one night (with the next two nights in Yosemite), so our thinking was to power through to Wuksachi the first night and then backtrack out the next day, stopping by the Sherman Tree, Moro Rock, etc. The hitch will probably be, from your description, that we will not want to just "power through" but stop everywhere and take in the views as we go. We'll see.

PBS' Nature just had an episode dedicated to Yosemite/Sequoia a few weeks ago. We watched it with the kids last night on demand to give them some context. So they were starting to get excited. (Not that they are not already excited about the Legoland/Seaworld/Disney part of the trip.)