Kings Canyon National Park
Kings Canyon National Park was our fourth national park in the Great National Park Roadtrip of 2025! The drive from Sequoia NP to Kings Canyon NP was interesting. These two parks are almost connected and we wondered why they are even considered two separate parks. They are managed as one park, but still considered two parks, but why? That just didn’t make sense to us, but we figured there was probably some political reason for this weird organization. We were in California, after all.
We started our drive from Sequoia NP to Kings Canyon NP very early the morning of Saturday, September 27. Once again, we used the GuideAlong app to narrate our Kings Canyon NP drive. Just before we crossed the “border” between parks, we stumbled onto another grove of giant sequoias, called Lost Grove. The road curved through this lesser known grove and we stopped to walk among the giant trees. We were the first ones there and had the place to ourselves for a while. These particular trees are not as big as “General Sherman”, and they don’t even have names, but it was a quiet, cool and solitary way to stand in awe of these giants that have been growing for thousands of years.
Our drive continued on to another famous sequoia grove, called Grant Grove. I bet you are wondering why we keep seeing sequoias when we just left Sequoia NP, but there are sequoia groves all over the Sierra Nevadas. The Grant Grove is home to a huge tree named, General Grant, second only in size to General Sherman. There are many anonymous giant sequoias, without name plates that are just as majestic. We enjoyed visiting this grove more than the Sherman Grove, back in Sequoia NP, because it was not nearly as crowded.
Our drive continued on the long trek down into the canyon. Kings Canyon was created by the King River, so it is more narrow than Yosemite Valley which was created by glaciers. The road into the canyon is another curvy, steep road with many switchbacks and eventually ends at a point aptly called “Roads End”. This point is the trailhead for several backcountry hikes. We met some folks back in Yosemite NP who had just come from Kings Canyon NP and they recommended that we hike the Mist Falls Trail once we got to this area. We took their recommendation and tackled the eight mile round trip hike. It turned out to be one of the highlights of our entire trip.
The drive down into Kings Canyon was a steep, narrow road that hugged the edge making Don and I long for an interstate freeway.
Mist Falls Trail: We hiked four miles along the King River to a very nice waterfall (watch the video clip below) and then four miles back. The terrain varied wildly. It started almost like a sandy beach because the granite was ground up so fine. Then, we entered a swamp area with lots of water plants followed by thick forests, granite domes and enormous granite fields where the boulders had broken off the granite domes that loomed over us. We even saw a rattlesnake curled up in the brush. Our trail also joined the historic John Muir Trail for a few miles. The JMT winds its way through the Sierra Nevadas along a 211 mile path. This trail had everything!
Our Great National Park Roadtrip of 2025 came to an end and we started making our way back to Steamboat Springs to recuperate a few days before returning home to our regular lives in Colleyville. It was a trip of a lifetime, but it couldn’t let us go without saying goodbye with this awesome rainbow exhibition as we drove through Utah. Truckers and cars alike stopped along Interstate 15 to photograph the progression of this rainbow. There wasn’t a pot of gold, but it was definitely something.
