sequoia trip merit badges i presented to molly during our trip (click to see enlarged image): making coffee on a campfire, putting up with my snoring, bear sighting, tent fire (artistic license taken for that one), and getting lost.

I just got back from an amazing trip. There’s a pencil-size muscle in my upper hip that is a little spasmy and my sinuses are athrob from too many altitudes, but overall I am just agog from everything I done saw and done did.

This was my third trip to Sequoia National Park in the past couple years. Once in the spring (the birthday episode), once last summer (the bear episode), and this one, in winter time. This would be the snow episode.

I had a vague notion that I would need “chains” if it got “snowy” but really had little grip of what might be going on in those Sierras. And what was going on was a whole lot of snowing. And road closing. And some monkeywrenching that kind of screwed up our plans on Friday night. Molly was coming from SF and I was coming from the south and because of the delays and our newbie status on all things snow, we decided to stay in Visalia for the night and trying to make it up and outta the foothills the following day, hoping for a clearer, warmer window between two big dumpings of our friend the snow.

Which was great with me: I love Visalia, that weird little town, and have wanted to spend a little more time there. We shan’t talk about the stinky Days Inn, but shall concentrate on describing the Friday night feast. The Visalia Visitors Bureau lady, when we asked her the good eats, said “you might like this one place? It’s in an old jail and the bartender has a handlebar mustache and he makes up the cocktail menu…” Imagine that the lady found that she was talking to a Molly and Becky-shaped cloud, so fast we hied. Custom booze in a novelty setting? Did we have a choice?

Jack & Charlie’s (careful, auto-loading audio) delivered. I had what they called “The Perfect Manhattan”, which indeed was so perfect, I might have to retire the Manhattan’s number (at least for a while) and MM had a grapefruit vodka thing whose glass was rimmed with jalapeno sea salt and was incredibly complex and delicious. Oh and the food was expensive and VERY good. MM had the rabbit! Dear reader, if you know me well, you can guess what I had from the menu. (Note: oops, it’s not there right now, but still, I KNOW you know what I had. The comments are open.)

The next day, there was indeed a clear window of opportunity to get up that big hill known as the Sierras. We learned to chain my car from dude at the Chevron station in the last-stop town of Three Rivers, then headed on up. Destination: Sequoia Lodge in Wuksachi Village.

More later!