Life With The Mace's: The Rest of the Story...

Greg and I woke up the next morning and were super excited to go to Sequoia National Park. Our first stop of the day was Lodge Pole in order to buy tickets for a tour of Crystal Cave. Once we purchased these tickets we headed to Moro Rock, which is a ginormous marble rock which has stairs along the side up to the top where you have the most magnificent views. On the way to Moro Rock we had a great time driving through Tunnel Log, it was so early when we drove through I was able to jump out and take pictures. When we drove back by on our way to The Tree Museum there was quite a line of cars waiting to get through. The Tree Museum was fairly uneventful although it did a great job of comparing the Sequoia tree’s height and width to different objects so that kids could attempt to grasp how big they are. Once we finished up at the tree museum we were inspired and decided to go see General Sherman Tree which is the largest tree on earth. This tree is massive but Greg and I agree that we enjoyed General Grant’s Tree much more as it was a much more personal experience…not to mention Greg and I have become recluses and all those people running around with cameras made us nervous! After we finished ooing and ahing at General Sherman’s Tree we realized that we needed to head back to camp in order to get our flashlights for the cave tour. This was kind of a nice little break in the day and we ate lunch (Sloppy Joes) at camp and listened to the creek…then it was time to leave so that we would not miss our tour. I decided to drive the winding road to our cave tour so that I would not get car sick…I cannot say the same for Greg. The drive there was beautiful although the road is for the most part only wide enough for one car so it was a little scary at some points. Once we got to the bottom of the road we were early for our tour but the tour guide was nice enough to let us tag along with an earlier group. The trail down to the cave was pretty steep but I think that it was my favorite hike; there were waterfalls, and bridges, wild flowers and gorgeous canyon views! The tour of Crystal Cave was well done, unfortunately though the cave has been pretty beaten up by past visitors so a lot of its beauty has been tarnished. One of the really neat things about this cave is the fact that it has an underground stream and the cave is part of a marble rock…so anywhere the stream runs you see the most magnificent shining marble! After the cave tour Greg and I started the hike back to the top and let me just say that going down was much more fun then heading up! After catching our breath at the top we decided to go collect some firewood and head back to camp for S’mores and a campfire. Back at camp we eagerly set about making a fire and to our dismay could not get the wood to light, we dumped cooking fuel on it, lighter fluid, tried using a camp newspaper…nothing, and to top it off we ran out of matches! So for dinner we settled on a Hostess Cupcake and went to bed at 7:45pm…my kind of night! In the morning we groggily made our way to the camp store so that we could get some matches, which Greg used to light the camp stove and being the chef that he is make pancakes for breakfast…YUM!!!! After breakfast we loaded up our little car and said good bye to our campsite. We knew the ride home would be long; thankfully Greg decided not to take the 245 home and instead opted for a different route through the parks which was just B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L! Traffic was a nightmare but we made it back safe and sound. So now you know the rest of the story of Greg and Janet’s amazing Memorial Day Weekend!