The Eastcoasters California Adventure

[dalmatian7]

Let me introduce myself, long time Dis lurker, sometime poster, 40 something mom of 1. I love Disney, cows, Penn State, and my Cardigan Welsh Corgi. I don't like my picture on the internet or taking pictures in general so this trip report will be more on facts than photos (but I will try to get some photos for you all). I decided to write this because there really aren't a lot of trip reports on Cali places other than DL on the Dis. I did really use the posts pinned under the DL boards and thank you to everyone who replied to my questions in earlier posts.
Our trip took place the first week of November 2022. Traveling from PA with me was DH (not a Disney fan) and DD12 (as big a fan as me and maybe then some) below is our pre trip report.
Pre Trip Report

Day 1 Arrive – Eta into Fresno is 4pm. Planning on driving to Visalia to our Air Bnb and grabbing quick Mexican to each there and relax in the hot tub. DD has requested mini golf or another activity.

Day 2 – Sequoia national Park

Day 3 – Drive to LA in the morning, looking to arrive at the Griffiths Observatory by noon. Picnic here and then check out the Observatory. Drive to GCH. Maybe grab supper on the way or at DTD, hotel is GCH

Day 4 – DCA/DL day

Day 5 – check out of GCH and head to the Peterson Car Museum and La Brea with afternoon time at the beach (probably Venice or Santa Monica). Checking into a hotel in old Town Pasadena for the remainder of the trip. Made a change here because the logistics for driving across LA twice seemed like a bad idea. Splurged on an ocean front room in Santa Monica. So we will be heading to La Brea and the Petersen (docent tour at 3) and then driving to Santa Monica to relax in our ocean front room and explore there.

Day 6 – WB Studios morning Heritage Square Museum in the afternoon. Red eye back to the east coast. Kept the hotel room for the night though so we would have somewhere to shower and change before our flight.

 

[dalmatian7]

How we did –

Day 1 NOV 1

We flew out of our small regional airport to Chicago O’Hare, then Dallas to Fresno CA with a 2pm arrival. My DD12 is a big Philadelphia Eagles fan and made it a point to wear an Eagles tee for her travel gear. This was back when they were still undefeated for the season. She got so many comments from people saying “Fly Eagles Fly.” We even had a gentleman in the Dallas airport start singing the “Fly Eagles Fly” song. We grabbed lunch at Chick-fil-A in Dallas.



From Dallas to Fresno, we hit a snafu. Our plane had to make an emergency landing in Albuquerque NM for a medical emergency on the flight.. By the time we landed, medical personal boarded, took care of the patient, left with the patient, we refueled (we were too heavy to land in Albuquerque, so they had to burn extra fuel before we landed) and they replaced the defibrillator on the plane, we burned over two hours sitting on the runway. So, our 2pm arrival became 4pm.
Our luggage arrival sign in Fresno


We rented a mid-size SUV from Alamo. Fresno is a smaller airport so even though they have three or four rental counters, they were all staffed by one person. Luckily, we were quickly on our way in our VW Atlas that did have 4X4.

 

[dalmatian7]

My husband lived in Visalia CA in the early 2000s and is usually in the area at least once a year for work. That was the reason I made it our base at this point. It was close to Sequoia, and we had knowledge of the area. Because of the later hour, we headed south from Fresno to downtown Visalia to find some supper before checking in to our AirBnb. Visalia has a very nice downtown with a lot of places to eat, although some were closed as it was a Tuesday. We prefer to stay away from chain restaurants if we can on vacation and try local eateries. We ended up at Alejandra’s Restaurant for some delicious and reasonably priced Mexican food. My husband loved his margarita too. Since we still had some driving to do, and were hungry, my lightweight self stuck with water and was the designated driver. Even our picky DD found the rice and quesadilla to be to her satisfaction. We then found a Wal-Mart on the way to our lodging and stocked up on water, breakfast food and snacks.
Lodging – This was our first ever AirBnB stay and I was a little nervous. We stayed in the Sequoia Tiny House. This is tiny house in the backyard of house in your standard recent build Visalia neighborhood. IT WAS AWESOME. While we never actually saw our hosts, they were super responsive to any questions, the directions for parking and getting in the gate were perfect, and the house had some lighting and the fireplace turned on when we got there. The house itself was just enough for the three of us. We had a little wet bar with a real refrigerator, a microwave, a table, couch, full size shower, and nice sized bedroom. The outdoors area was very private and had a lovely seating area and a hot tub. We were happy to unpack and relax for the rest of the evening. Any plans of mini golf etc were lost in the 2 hour flight delay and the rare central valley rainy weather.


I don't have many good pictures of the Tiny House. I thought I would be able to use their pictures but I can't get the files to convert. I felt like we were staying in an HGTV episode it was so cute inside.

A few weeks before the trip I added some of our destinations to my weather app to check every day. About a week out, I became worried about the weather forecast in Sequoia National Park for our trip. The day we arrived in CA, the park began restricted access because of snow in the higher elevations. We went to bed that night not knowing if we would be able to gain access to the park (CA requires snow chains even in 4X4 vehicles).

 

[erinch]

I’m in!

 

[dalmatian7]

Thanks for joining in! The updates will be slow. I want to try to be as accurate as possible.

 

[dalmatian7]

Day 2 NOV 2

An east coast to west coast time change had us all messed up and everyone was up to the bathroom by 3am. We made it to 5 before a tv was turned on. After checking the weather apps, Sequoia’s website, and Instagram, we made the decision to grab a big breakfast and head to the park entrance to see if we could get in or not. All the websites said that you could rent tire chains close to the park and we figured if we had to have them to get in, we would take that route. The snow in the park had stopped and wasn’t expected to start again until early afternoon. We figured we would drive as far as we could and work our way back to the entrance. For reference, we would be entering at the Foothills Entrance.

We went to Grannys Country Café for a delicious breakfast. As eastcoaters were taking advange of all the CA food we could get. I had an egg and linguica, DD had a short stack of huge pancakes and my DH had an omelet. Stuffed we headed out with just snacks and water with us.

The foothills entrance to Sequoia National park is about a 35-40 min drive from Visalia. It was a beautiful drive as the rain the night before had cleared and we had lovely views of all the farming in the valley. As we began the assent closer to the park, we began to watch the temperature on the vehicle thermometer drop.

We arrived at the foothills entrance at 9:30am. There were one or two cars in front of us. Note that the parks only take credit cards for entry fees. We asked the ranger about the tire chains and she gave us the standard line that tire chains were required past a certain point but did not check our vehicle for them. We decided to drive as far as we could and if we found weather we would turn back.

Driving up, and up.


Some wildlife


This was hands down one of the best days of my life.

Our first stop was at Amphitheater Point Lookout which was fogged in. We stopped because my-never-gets-car-sick daughter found out that she can’t look at a paper map on curvy roads. A little fresh air and gum helped her.

Our first stop at Amphitheater Point Look Out, fogged in.


Below is the map showing what we should be seeing and what we saw.

Our first look at fire damage

I want to preface this with saying that I have read a pile of Disboards and other site trip reports on the Sequoia and how awe inspiring they are but people say that about other places I have been and I have never had the “feeling” like that. I teared up as we drove among them. It was so serene and peaceful even being in the car.

We drove to the Giant Forest visitors center first to get some information (we weren’t sure what was open due to weather) and to use the facilities. What a cute little museum with a lot of information.




Our first instance of people behaving badly was a guy knowingly having a Sequoia cone (you aren't supposed to pick them up) comparing it to the ones in the museum, but yet hiding it in his pocket. Anyway, for a small space it contains a ton of information on the trees history, biology, problems, etc etc. It also has a gift area, a place to stamp your National Park Passport (I had forgotten mine but stamped some notebook paper instead), and complete your Jr Ranger activities (more on that later).

I particularly enjoyed this display and the Muir quote really hit home after seeing the fire damage on the way up.

Once we spoke with a ranger about what was open, we headed back to the car to drive to General Sherman. Parking was limited here and we arrived about 20 minutes ahead of the crowd and got one of the last legal spots. We hiked the General Shermans loop (it is paved and very easy, although it was a little slippery with snow on the trail in most spots.) Just amazing.


I took pictures of all these information panels. It helped to remember what we were looking at and saved time on reading them all.


I think one of the reasons I was so captivated by the trees was that I could smell and touch them. The Grand Canyon is amazing, but you can’t put your hand on it. This was looking at national treasures that were right there and were so immersive. Take the whole loop, we went directly to the tree but took another longer path back to the parking lot. You actually get a great view of the General Sherman from here too.




When we left General Shermans parking lot, we saw some vehicles equipped with tire chains (although on the back wheels only of a front wheel drive car?). The roads remained only wet at this point.
More later.....