Day 7 – March 16, 2019 (Saturday)
We begrudgingly left Rush Creek Lodge at 7:30 this morning
and drove to Pinnacles, opting to enter from the east side since the caves are
the west side are closed for flooding.
When we first pulled up, a police officer directed us to park in the
overflow parking as no cars were allowed in the park due to the crowds of
people already there (it was about 11:30 am).
We went ahead and parked in the overflow parking by the Visitor Center
and had a quick picnic of whatever we had left.
Then we grabbed our hat pins and got in the very long line for the
shuttle bus. We were waiting for quite a
while, realizing that the shuttle was fairly small so we decided to walk the
2.6 miles over to the Bear Gulch Day Area, which is where the hike was that we
actually wanted to do. The hike started
out rather plain and boring – we joked that it looked like we were in
Texas. It was also a little bit hot
compared to the weather we’ve had the last several days. We did see a few California Condors (giant
birds). We finally got over to the day
use area and began the Bear Gulch Cave Trail.
It was very pretty and when we got to the “caves” they were
amazing. They were wet and dark and
small.
At one point we were basically on
all fours and our backpacks were still hitting the tops of the caves. At the end of the caves, up one set of steep
stairs was the Bear Gulch Reservoir and it was neat.
We also saw people rock climbing all around
the place. The caves were pretty
cool. Otherwise I’m not sure that this
should even be a national park. It’s way
down on my list. We went from my very
favorite (#34) to my 2nd to 3rd least favorite
(#35). We opted for the Rim Trail back
to the day use area because there was no way we were going to try and go back
through what very much seemed to be one-way caves.
Once we got back to the Bear Gulch Day Use Area, we were
able to catch the shuttle back to our car and left a little bit after 3. From there we drove to Carmel. We grabbed a parking spot right along the
beach and walked up and down the sidewalk a bit, admiring the houses and
guessing at how much they cost. The
water was so turquoise – I don’t think I’ve seen the Pacific like that
before. We were also able to see Pebble
Beach golf course – wow. I’d been
wanting to see Carmel since I was in the 8th grade.
From there we drove back into town and had tacos at Island
Tacos, then we drove a very short distance to the Point Lobos State Nature
Preserve. My parents had told us it was
worth while but we got there 15 minutes before the entrance gate closed so we
just stayed in the car and drove around – very pretty.
Then we drove down the 1, over those two beautiful bridges
and towards Big Sur.
We turned around at
Big Sur (which seems like an amazing place to camp) and got a few gallons of
$5.00 gas (note it’s about $2.15 in Dallas).
We drove back up the way we came, watching the sun set and singing along
to the radio. And we finally pulled into
the Best Western Plus in Salinas around 8:15pm. After some trouble at the front
desk (I’ve apparently paid for this room twice now) we are now settled into our
room and are very tired and smelly.
It’s about 9:30 and we need to leave by 7:30 to catch our noon flight that lands in Dallas at 5pm. I’m not going to write anything tomorrow so I’m signing off tonight. The trip was amazing. Everything other than a few trail closures was pretty much perfect. The kids are 13 and 11 and have been to 35 parks. President Trump created two new ones – one in the past few weeks (one in Indiana) and apparently the St. Louis Arch is now a national park as of 2018. So there are now 61 parks.
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