Tom's National Park Adventure

The morning started early, around 6:15am. Jeff and I got up and broke down camp. It packs up pretty quickly. We were headed out from the campground by 7:30 at the latest. While driving out of the park Jeff had a suggestion. We had covered the park pretty well over the last couple of days. There was however one thing that Jeff wanted to do that we hadn’t gotten to do. On the way out, we pulled over at a pullout that was just a little less than a 1/2 mile from El Capitan. WE GOT OUT AND CLIMBED (to the base of) El CAPITAN!

So its not as impressive as I’m trying to make it out to be, but we did have to climb quite a bit to get to the starting place where the real climbers start off. When we got there we noticed that there were three climbers on the face working their way up. It is just incredible to me, to see these guys that far up the mountain that early in the morning. So here are some pictures that Jeff took of the rock face and the three guys climbing it.

We hiked back to the car and eventually drove out of the park on our way back to the Fresno airport. It takes about 2 1/2 hours to drive there. I dropped Jeff off to a long day of sitting around and waiting for flights. My day on the other hand was down driving to the Lassen Volcanic National Park. It is about 45 miles east of Redding California. It took me about 5 1/2 hours to get here.

I didn’t arrive until after 5:00pm so I wasn’t able to visit the visitors center. I did however set up my camp and ate some dinner. There is a campground market or store. They have showers!!!!!!!!! My highlight of the day was a nice long hot shower!

After i got cleaned up, I drove back to the visitors center to see if they had a public WiFi that i could use to publish this blog entry. No such luck. So I will be getting up early to drive 30 miles so I can get cell service and get this entry published.

More tomorrow…….