I’m not one to take impromptu vacations. I’m neither in the financial position to drop that kind of luxury cash nor inclined to take off at a moments notice for parts northeast. But early Friday morning that’s exactly what I did: a vacation to Sequoia National Park’s picturesque Mineral King fell in my lap thanks to a generous invitation from my girlfriend’s parents (who had rented a cabin for the weekend but couldn’t make it up thanks to an emergency). After hours of hemming and hawing my girlfriend finally convinced me by playing the history card: Mineral King is a long honored tradition for her family dating back to her great-grandparents, four generations can’t be wrong. And they weren’t! We saw tarantulas, creeks, deer, California quails, streams, We stayed in the same place Kelly’s family had always stayed in—the Silver City Resort—where we lived with no electricity, phones or cell reception (the lights and fridge were propane fueled, the heat provided by fireplace).
After two days and one night the fireplace heat proved insufficient to sustain us. The entire Silver City resort had to shut down a week early due to the weekend’s extremely cold weather, which froze the pipes solid. We left in a hurry mere minutes after we returned from a 6+ mile hike up to White Chief Bowl. Despite the hasty exit, I can’t say enough good things about the place: Mineral King—and its surrounding Sequoia subalpine biome—was so drastically outside our norm that it’s made settling back home a slow and painful reentry back to the routine. Our current smoke and ash laden air only adds insult to injury. The sooner I can get back, the better.
Photos by Kevin Ferguson. Take a look at my Mineral King flickr set here.
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