As I mentioned before, we said that on our San Jose trip we’d just do the Winchester Mystery House, and maybe a National Park. We knew we’d want to spend a lot more than one day in Yosemite, and Kings Canyon and Sequoia were a little too far away. We thought about going to Big Sur, but that’s a trip we’ve always talked about taking several days to do, so Pinnacles it was. It’s the newest National Park! Established as such in 2013, although it had been a national monument since 1908.

I wasn’t expecting to be blown away, since it’s pretty small and I’d never heard much about it and, looking at pictures, I imagined it to be very “Colorado” (which we are so used to). But we had a great time! We came in the east entrance and went to the visitor center, where we asked about a good, short hike (that I could do in Crocs 😂). The ranger sent us to the Bear Gulch Cave Trail. My Crocs ended up being perfect, because most of the trail is through a cave, and a good portion of that is through the water (Nat had to take off his shoes and socks and walk barefoot on rocks). Even though it’s a little less than a mile, we spent more than an hour hiking through the cave to Bear Gulch Reservoir, using our phones as flashlights. The sight of the reservoir at the end was pretty incredible. We hung out there for a while, then headed back out through the cave. It was a nice, short trip – our tenth National Park together. And on the way out of the park, we saw a bobcat! I don’t think I’d ever seen one in the wild before.