This post is shorter than normal as I've had hardly any time to write it.

After spending the night at Sequoia National Park I took a very short drive north to Kings Canyon National Park. This park is named for the immense river and glacial valleys that have been carved through the mountains and the canyon was what I was most interested to see.

After visiting another Sequoia grove (featuring the second largest tree in the world) I decided to get my camp site sorted early to avoid having to look around like the night before. I quickly found a good spot with a view out over the Central Valley and got settled before leaving to see the canyon.

The drive into the canyon would have to be the most amazing and awesome drive I have ever done. The road winds steeply down the mountain side through the forest and eventually comes up against sheer cliffs with the mountains on one side and the turbulent river below on the other. It's hard to describe just how massive everything is here. The canyon is at times up to 2.5 km below the surrounding mountains. I was actually awestruck for a second or two when it all came in to view.

I have tried to film so of the drive in but I haven't been able to check the video yet so I'll upload that a bit later if it has worked.

The road winds down from the mountains into the canyon and then follows the Kings river for several miles before ending a back country registration hut. This is often either the start or end point for hikers setting off on multi day hikes in the wilderness. There are also plenty of day hikes that can be done from here and I decided to do a ~12km walk up the river to a waterfall called Mist Falls.

The walk was fairly flat but long. There had been a lot of talk about bears on the trial so I was both eager to see one and nervous in equal measure. The falls themselves were good although I suspect they were flowing much more gently than they normally would because of the drought. On the way back to the car I finally saw my first bear. I had caught up to some people waiting on the track hoping that the bear would move to the side which it did. I've filmed it as best I could which you can see below. I'm still not sure whether it was large or small for a black bear but it seemed a bit smaller than I had expected. It was great to see one though.

The sun set from my camp site

The view of the Central Valley at night