Posts Tagged "national park"

It has already been a year since California had a great winter, with record snow. I have been waiting for the right conditions to get to Yosemite before a massive winter storm. I realized recently that I have never posted the images from that trip. For me the right conditions are a fast moving storm coming (called an atmospheric river) bringing a lot of moisture. Ideally the storm should hit Yosemite in late afternoon and last all night. The temperature in Yosemite should be low enough to produce snow and I want at least 12 to 16 inches. The fast moving storm is important because I want sunny skies the next day. The storm happened in the middle of the week last year, we drove ahead of the storm and stayed in the park, while the storm dumped around 18 inches of...

From San Francisco, Channel islands National Parks is relatively close and can be done in a 3-day weekend. Channel Islands is not very popular because it’s relatively hard to get to and most of the features require to dive to see them. There are about 30,000 visitors a year that actually go to the islands and another 60,000 that simply dive there. The reward is well worse the trouble, it’s not frequently that you can hike in a National Park in California and not being crowded. The park is composed of five islands (Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, Anacapa and Santa Barbara), all are open to the public except the island of San Miguel which is currently closed. With a little bit of planning before your trip you can secure a camping spot and a place on...

This year for the 4th of July, we did not want to drive a lot but we were still looking for an camping trip. We looked at several possible options but they were all booked (some booked over a year in advance). My wife got the idea to check out Pinnacles National Park. It’s so close to the Bay Area that you can drive to it in less than 2 hours (excluding traffic). Pinnacles is known as a climbing mecca (in winter months), for its California condors and for the large bat population living in the caves. We were expecting a lot of people during the 4th of July weekend and yes the campground was almost full but you read it right, on the busiest weekend of the year, there was still space left in the campground. Pinnacles, I found out, is the best kept secret in...