Our first stop was King’s Canyon National Park. That’s situated right between Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks. We chose this locale because Alicia had read about it in the New York Times travel section (her bible). They said that the park has all the natural beauty of the other parks, but about 1/10 the visitors due to the slightly more difficult time getting there. Whoever wrote the column also mentioned a waterfall that you can get to the top of and swim around in some pools formed by the mountain stream. So of course, we wanted in.
It was around day #3 in the park that we decided to check out the falls. We had done a 14 mile hike the day before and we were in the mood for some R&R in a mountain pool. We showed up at Roaring River Falls pretty early in the day. The path to the waterfall is fully paved (kind of a bummer for us naturalists) and we were wearing sandals and our swimsuits (it was a scorcher). The waterfall is really beautiful, but we weren’t interested in sight seeing. We wanted a swim, so we decided to head up to where these pools supposedly were. Immediately upon veering off the beaten path, we were met with a sign that warned us to go no further.
At this point, we figured that the hiking sign was just a formality. Park service Nazi’s, etc. We headed onward!