Trip 12: Central California National Parks

For our 12th national parks trip, we flew to San Francisco, then traveled to Pinnacles, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Yosemite National Parks before returning home via Sacramento. Mid-October ended up being a great time of year to visit these parks. We experienced mostly sunny days with temperatures ranging from the lower 70s to the lower 80s during the day. Yosemite was the most populated of the parks, but we never really experienced crowds, traffic, or waits. Where we could, we stayed in lodges in the park, as the nearest hotels or outside lodging tended to be about 45 minutes away. Total driving distance for this trip was 1,085 miles, although much of that was on narrow, steep, twisty roads! We'll describe each park in separate posts.