Confessions of an RVer: KING'S CANYON NATIONAL PARK

Kings Canyon National Park is a national park in the southern Sierra Nevada, in Fresno and Tulare Counties, California in the United States. Originally established in 1890 as General Grant National Park, it was greatly expanded and renamed to Kings Canyon National Park on March 4, 940. General Grant National Park was initially created to protect a small area of giant sequoias from logging. Although John Muir's visits brought public attention to the huge wilderness area to the east, it took more than fifty years for the rest of Kings Canyon to be designated a national park. Environmental groups, park visitors and many local politicians wanted to see the area preserved; however, development interests wanted to build hydroelectric dams in the canyon. Even after President Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the park in 1940, the fight continued until 1965, when the Cedar Grove and Tehipite Valley dam sites were finally annexed into the park.

As visitation rose post-World War II, further debate took place over whether the park should be developed as a tourist resort, or retained as a more natural environment restricted to simpler recreation such as hiking and camping. Ultimately, the preservation lobby prevailed and today, the park has only limited services and lodgings despite its size. Due to this and the lack of road access to most of the park, Kings Canyon remains the least visited of the major Sierra parks, You can reach King's Canyon through Sequoia or it has an entrance directly into the park.

We had heard that the weather was going to be bad on Saturday with snow and rain, so we decided to try to get to King's Canyon on Friday. We didn't want to be driving in snow and ice! We knew it was going to start raining in the afternoon late so we tried to go early and leave before the rain. When we got to the park, most of the roads were closed from winter and would not be open until May. Also, most of the hiking trails were closed too. There is a grove of the giant sequoias, where the General Grant tree is located, and that was pretty much the only thing open. We stopped at one of the visitors' center and asked about driving to the view point of the canyon. We were told that we could only drive down to Hume Lake and on our way, we might get a glimpse of the canyon. We drove to the lake, but it was so cloudy and hazy, we couldn't see the canyon.

Needless to say, our day at King's Canyon was a bust. We called it a day early. One good thing happened. After we got to lower ground, the sun decided to come out. With all the beautiful wildflowers out right now, the sun made for some neat pictures of the flowers! We are headed to Yosemite next. Rumors of possible flooding had Yosemite close down for the day on Saturday. It was a false alarm and opened back up Sunday. Cross your fingers for good weather!