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Thursday, September 11, 2008 Day 6
Today, we toured the Mariposa Grove, a large forest of Giant Sequoia Trees. We took another road to a different entrance to the park. It was also an hour drive. If we went the other way, it would have taken an hour and a half to get to the park and then another hour to get to the grove. We hiked 1.5 miles and 1000 vertical feet up the mountain to the museum. The trees were awesome. We saw wildlife of mule deer (they have big ears and black on their tails), chipmunks, ground squirrels and a raven named Kevin. He greeted the tourists and posed to have his picture taken in front of the museum. The elevation here was 6600 feet. They had running water rest rooms and a water fountain. We filled our water bottles at the restroom because the water fountain was swarming with bees. Some people had seen bears on the trail but I’m glad we didn’t run into them. The people said they were in a more remote area of one of the trails.
We climbed back down the hot dusty trail. My white socks had turned tan. I should have worn my tan socks.
We drove to Glacier Point. It was a long drive but the views were awesome. We were at an elevation of 7214 feet. The valley floor was 3000 feet below us. We could see most of the mountain ranges from this point. There is a trail to hike up here but it is called four-mile trail but at 4.8 it is almost 5 miles and 3000 feet of steep vertical climb.
The trip home took 2 hours. We had dinner at the pizzeria across the street in the Pioneer Village. We were too tired to walk very far. It wasn’t a typical pizzeria. The owner looked of Mexican decent. They had a variety of menu items that I would have called American cuisine rather than Italian. They had much more than the Happy Burger. The waitress didn’t recognize our accent and asked where we were from. I thought, “How far away, Philadelphia PA. After our pizza and ice cream, we called it a day.