Van Life Week 3_ Sequoia National Park and Rae lakes Loop (King's Canyon)

All right. I don't even know what to say to the vlog anymore. Here we are in Sequoia National Park. It's pretty epic. The Forest of Giants. You can see all of the enormous trees. They're massive. All right, here we are. The biggest tree in the world. General Sherman tree in Sequoia. It's 5 30 a.m. We are at the Ray Lakes Roads End Permitting Center. We're going to try to get our permit as a walk up this morning. The place opens at 7 a.m. They issue about 10 to 15 permits. It sounds like we shouldn't have any problems, but the Ray Lakes is one of the most popular trails in the Sierras. We'll see what we can do for that. I think it's about 37 to 41 miles depending on the trip report that you look at. We got here early just in case, but it looks like a really cool trail. All right, we ended up getting our permit for Ray Lakes Loop, so we are off for 41 miles. Yeah, we're doing it counterclockwise, which means more elevation gain first. I can't remember. I think it's about 3,000 gain today and then 4,000 gain tomorrow, but then we'll be at Ray Lakes and it's all downhill from Glen Pass, so it should be exciting. All right, we're about two minutes into our hike backpacking loop. There's a black bear right here. Black bear we've seen on the trip, on the trail. It's fun. We've made it to our first campsite, Junction Meadow. We've hiked anywhere between 10 and 12 miles depending on which trip report you read. All different. All different, but we gained about 3,600 feet of elevation and the views are beautiful here. Tons of granite cliffs. It's day two. We just started hiking. We have 8.6 miles today, but 4,000 feet in elevation to gain. You have to go up Glen Pass and then descend to Ray Lakes. All right, this is where we join the John Muir Trail and the PCT. All right, here Kristen comes up. We are heading up Glen Pass on the Ray Lakes loop. Pretty beautiful backdrop here. Getting more into the glacially carved valleys. I'll keep getting this here in Nevada. I think the pass is up there, so not too far. Pretty cool granite boulder fields. Yeah, it's good stuff out here. Having a good time and getting close and all downhill the next couple of days. All right, we're out here at the top of Glen Pass. It's all downhill from here. You can see the Ray Lakes off down there. We'll be camping tonight. I'm going to cross a little bit of snow first. We got some good stuff out here. Having fun. Finish the Ray Lakes loop in a couple days. All right, we made it to Upper Ray Lake. It's beautiful. The water is crystal clear. Jump in some water. Pine dip. Oh yeah, good way to wash off after coming down from the pass. Didn't get a video of it. We kind of forgot about that. It was cold. It's chicken and dumplings. That's our view. We have the dark chocolate cheesecake for dessert and a blood orange Hefeweizen jelly squeeze. We accidentally didn't pack breakfast or lunch. That's a total me move. All right, we're at the Ray Lakes. Gorgeous view. It's freezing. June is still too early for the Sierras. We're gonna have to go to bed so early. It's so cold. All right, it's day three. Probably gone about seven miles. We're hoping to go about 15.5 just so our last day we can have about 10 miles and that way we're out early and we can go get some food. Really beautiful. We're going to camp in mid-paradise valley, I think, and just enjoy the day. All right, we just finished. It was a great loop. We look crazy. So that's a wrap on Ray Lakes loop. Oh man. We're happy to be back in the van.