Tokopah Falls

Thursday we drove up to Lodgepole Visitor Center and Village.  This is at the top of the Sequoia's, from here you can continue all the way over to Kings Canyon, where we were yesterday.  We went into the museum and learned a little about the big trees, the biggest being the General Sherman which is 40 ft in diameter.  The Sentinel in comparison is only 28 ft in diameter.

We talked to one of the rangers for good places to hike that weren't crowded.  He pointed us to the Muir grove up the road a little ways at the Dorst Creek campground.  The campground is still closed so we found a place to park across the street from it and walked in.  The map we had shows the trail is at the end of the road into the campground, only problem is there are several roads and we weren't sure which one to take.  We decided on the one that looked like the main road through the campground, once we got to the back, or what we thought was the back, there were other roads to confuse us.  Joe went one way and I went another hoping to find the trail.  We have walkie talkies so we were able to keep in touch with each other.  I took the lower area and ran into my favorite critter the marmot, you can see he hasn't missed many meals.  He is quite chubby.  There were quite of few of these critters in this area.  I went further down the road and came to the amphitheater, where I waited for Joe to join me.  While standing there enjoying the quiet a deer came by close to where I was standing, he was beautiful especially in that setting.

 Once Joe joined me, we thought we found a trail in back of the amphitheater and followed it for a ways, it turned out to just me an animal trail.  It was beautiful back in the woods with no one around.  It was so quite and serene.

Funny looking mushrooms

We finally decided we were done looking and walked back to the truck.  We went down to the meadow and had lunch.  We were told that a black bear was there, but he was gone by the time we arrived.  After lunch we went to the lodgepole village to hike to Tokopah Falls, about 1.7 miles one way.  Just a nice late afternoon stroll.  The Tokopah is so picturesque with many cascades and roiling water.  We watched as a father and his three boys played in one to the still areas in the river, it looked very cold.  You could see the falls from some distance, we couldn't wait to get to it.

Joe in his usual resting position

After enjoying the falls we started back down the trail.  It wasn't long before Joe spotted a bear.  We watched it wander through the trees until it got close enough to take pictures of it.  It is just a yearling and you had to wonder where it's mom was.  Luckily a ranger was with us when Joe spotted it and said we didn't need to worry just to not spook it.  It was pretty cool watching him when he started clawing at a dead tree looking for something to eat.

What a great day this was, the weather was warm and sunny, the falls were awesome and the wildlife was plentiful.  I shall sleep good tonight.

Friday is my veg day, so Joe went for an all day hike to Heather lake.  It was a long cold snowy wet hike and he loved every minute of it.  See previous post on his hike to Heather lake.