In the list of top 10 deepest lakes in the world, Crater Lake is pretty cool for several reasons. In addition to this lake being in a volcanic caldera (a crater-like hole that forms after a volcanic eruptions leave the ground deep underneath unstable and unsupported).
It's also a lake with no connected sources (streams, etc). So that makes it crystal clear. Interestingly, there's actually a way to measure the clarity of a body of water: the Secchi disk:
On the drive through the hills on the way into Yosemite Valley, you can see some of the recent wildfire devastation. There were a few places that had been setup with what looked like makeshift lumber mills, each having large stacks of charbroiled logs piled high. They maintained sprinklers on them to keep them wet, for some reason. I couldn't find that I took any pictures of these burnt log mills. Not sure if they can still salvage some of the wood deep inside the logs, if they grind them up for sawdust, or just stack the logs out of the burned zones to remove any future wildfire fuel.
Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon Park are lesser known parks
compared to their northern neighbor, Yosemite. Although they lack the
grandeur of Yosemite's rock formations and waterfalls, Sequoia National
Park is still pretty magnificent in its own right.
The park is set up on a half loop, encompassing over 400,00 acres with an elevation climb from 1700 feet to the higher elevation points of around 7000 to 8000 feet with varying biospheres by elevation. From start to finish, it was by far the most diverse park we have been to, yet.
Death Valley has plenty of living things. Campgrounds, resorts, swimming pools, restaurants, and more tourist amenities can make it quite the opposite kind of experience that its name would suggest.
But the landscapes are probably the main attraction in this place. It feels like the closest thing you can get to standing on a desolate Martian landscape. Many of the photos you could take here, resemble those sent back from the Curiosity rover.
Not being huge fans of hot weather, we decided to do the whole trip in one long day. Which probably was a mistake, because there were so many things to see that we hurried from place to place, spending much of the time driving between viewpoints, hiking trails, or other destinations. I could easily spend another couple days seeing things that we passed by, and hiking some of the longer trails. It's a big place. The entire park comprises nearly 3.4 million acres. It's more than 4 hours just to drive from one end to the other, which you'd never actually do. You loop around the park, meandering in and out of different areas.
Here are the highlights:
Four months late, but Trek Tales is officially up. We named it after our RV, a 1997 Safari Trek (class A motorhome).
We won't be
able to write about each and every day's event, but will cover the highlights and points of
interest. We're hoping to get at least one post up a week.
Also, you can view our map to see where we are currently at.
Six Flags was something I've wanted to do since I was a kid. It sets itself apart as a theme park for roller coaster enthusiasts. While every other park has an over-arching theme (Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knotts, etc), Six Flags just tries to have the biggest and baddest rides.
The entire experience of the day can thus be easily broken down to each thrill ride: