The summer feels like it’s flying by. I’ve just come back from a girls’ week in Cleveland, Ohio (a blog post will be coming on that soon – don’t sleep on Ohio!), and have been catching up on various interviews and life admin. It feels like we’ve just returned from our CA roadtrip, but in reality we left for our trip almost a whole month ago.

Our August will be filled with family visits and some more travel – we are doing a couples-only trip to Quebec City (thank you Mimi for babysitting!!) and will be heading back to Boston for a long weekend. Before I know it, it’ll be fall again 😦 I am trying to cherish these last lazy days while the kids are stable and I feel like I have a little bit of time for myself.

And now, for the recap of our ~4 days in Kings Canyon & Sequoia (SEKI)…

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Kings Canyon and Sequoia are right next door to each other, and are HUGE. We stayed in the park in Kings Canyon, right near Grant’s Grove and the visitor center, and it still felt like we had to drive a good bit for some of our excursions. After our trip to SEKI and Yosemite though, I’ve discovered that National Parks are actually pretty toddler friendly if you modify your expectations a bit. There wasn’t a huge pressure to sightsee everything or eat out, and the kids could mostly run around the trails without us worrying about traffic (of course we carried them during some treacherous hikes). Below are some of the main family-friendly attractions, bucketed by geography.

General Grant area: This was probably the most central part we could’ve stayed at in the parks. There is a nice easy trail around General Grant, and the visitor center complex is a great place to stop. One of my favorite hikes of the trip was Big Stumps trail, which isn’t as “scenic” – the trail takes you around a bunch of sequoias that were chopped down, but the remaining stumps give you a better sense of how huge these trees actually are. It’s an easy hike and goes through some beautiful meadows, too.

General Sherman / Lodgepole Visitor Center area: This warrants a full day. A lot of the best attractions in Sequoia are pretty concentrated here. We loved Moro Rock (not the most toddler friendly – S had to stop halfway and we took turns summitting the top), General Sherman Tree / The Congress Trail, and the Giant Forest Museum. We did part of the Crescent Meadow Loop, but by that time had already spent a long time in the car and wanted to go home for kids’ naps, so didn’t finish the whole thing. Lots of very flat, toddler-friendly trails in this area though – if we didn’t have the kids we definitely would’ve been able to spend an entire day here.

Big Stumps trail, General Sherman Tree

Hume Lake – technically not in the national parks, but is in the National Forest where you have to drive to get between Sequoia and Kings Canyon. A Christian youth camp runs the settlement at the lake, but Sandy Cove was perfect for the kids and the town was a nice place to stop for treats and picnics. Building in “downtime”, usually near a beach of some sort, is essential for keeping us and the kids refreshed on a roadtrip like this, and we had a great day at the lake.

Hume Lake

Kings Canyon Byway – I get carsick so we didn’t do another hour drive down the Byway to get to the end of the park, but this is what you would take to get to Zumalt Meadows and some of the waterfalls in Kings Canyon. We hiked Panorama Point, which was close to our cabin and gave us a great view of the Canyon.

Moro Rock

The roads are pretty windy in the park and the majority of the parks is wilderness, but 3-4 days with toddlers was completely doable (and felt pretty adventurous, unlike Yosemite which is heavily developed). M loves trees, so Sequoia was his favorite national park we’ve ever done. It was pretty magical walking amongst the giants – they are the closest earthly things we have to Ents.

Up next: Yosemite! – only a 3 hour drive away, back through Fresno.