CA - Day 8 & 9 - Pinnacles NP

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Last full day of vacay. Originally, we planned to spend the day at Kings and Sequoia National Park, but the wildfires made us change our plan. We decided to head to Pinnacles National Park, since we had not visited that park. We were joined by Mike’s brother and wife for the day, which was very enjoyable!

Pinnacles National Park

We hiked to the Talus Caves along the Bear Gulch Cave which connected to the Moses Spring Trail, which leads to the reservoir (it had a little bit of water). The cave was not a cave in a sense that we were used to. It had a ton of openings to the sky and was never really closed in. It seemed more like a slot canyon. Once we were done exploring the reservoir, we continued to the High Peaks Trail. At first we were not going to hike that complete trail, since it was pretty long (6.7 miles), but once we were up to the top it was so scenic we decided to continue.

The importance of the park is the condors. Condors were reintroduced to the park in 2003. Currently, there are 27 of them in the park. High Peaks trail was one of the best places to see them. We are not positive that we saw any (they have lighter colors on the underside of the wing and the flight pattern is really smooth) – there were a lot of turkey vultures flying around. The High Peaks trail is considered strenuous and it is advised to bring a lot of water. By the time, we reached the trailhead we were out of water (I think we started with 6 bottles).

Pinnacles National Park

The visitor center was really small at this park and there was not much for food, just some snacks and stuff that could be microwaved.   Dinner was at the Running Rooster in Hollister - yummy wood fired cooking. Traveling back towards Sacramento, we stayed at the Best Western Andersens Inn Santa Nella. It was not the best...the carpet was in desperate need of cleaning and the room did not smell the best. I definitely would not have called this place a 3 star type of accommodation. Breakfast was not up to normal Best Western standards.


Sunday, September 6, 2015

The drive to the airport was as expected - uneventful. My only complaint about the airport is there are not many options for food (3 in the terminal we were in). We had a layover in Atlanta – which had great food choices! We each got a cupcake (carrot cake and strawberry) – yum! The flight to Detroit and drive home was good.