Sequoia-Kings Canyon 7/20/2002 - Day 1 Arrival at Camp

This year's camping trip took us to Cedar Grove in King's Canyon National Park, just north of Sequoia National Park. We stayed at Sheep Creek campground, the first campground you come to @ Cedar Grove.

This is the entrance to Sheep Creek. You get a yellow envelope at the signpost, find a campsite you like, leave some stuff there so people know that site is taken, then go back to the entrance and make your payment. There is a silver colored post to the left of the billboard - you slip your payment in there. The campsites were $14 a night.

The campground has flush toilets, but not all the restrooms have lights. We had a more "rustic" restroom, in that we had to bring our flashlights. On the other side of the campground, there was a restroom with lights, and a separate handicapped restroom (1 person) with lights and an outlet.

View of some of the campsites at Sheep Creek, taken from the restroom. Notice the bear boxes. Sequoia and Kings Canyon are in the process of changing out the bear boxes to these bigger ones - an improvement, I think. To the right is a cedar tree. There were several in the campground, and the air smelled like a mixture of pine and cedar.

We stayed at Campsite 24, which is a great campsite ... if you'd like to be in the sun for the majority of the day. Lesson learned - pick a campsite later in the day - like 10am or 11am, and make sure it's one in the shade for the most part. The bear box was so hot that I had to keep getting ice to keep the food from spoiling. On the other hand, we were right next to a creek, and could hear the water during the night, plus we had a great view of the stars at night. It was very nice. I really liked campsites #22 and #20, next to us - there was a lot of shade.

There are many little creeks and streams throughout Cedar Grove that feed into the South Fork of the King's River, which is at the end of the campground. This picture is taken from our tent, and we could hear the little creek at night when we went to sleep. It was very nice.

The kids set up the tent, and the girls wanted to try out the tent after we set up camp.