Road Trip - California Summer '23

May 20-27

Car: Toyota Tacoma

Nothing summarizes the trip better than the picture above. This is the highest peak in the lower 48 states (Mt Whitney), that we woke up next to prior to driving to the lowest point in United States (Badwater Basin). We had been on a lot of winding roads in the Pacific Northwest, but I think this trip topped it. Other than our constant changes in elevation; this trip also consisted of four national parks visited, multiple hikes accomplished, our engagement, and 2,025 miles driven!

Pictured above is the route that we took (minus a few detours). We initially planned to cut through Yosmite and Sequoia, but due to heavy precipitation in the mountains this year, we had to take a longer route. This ended up bringing us to places that we didn't intend to see, but are glad we didn't miss!

The list below goes through our itinerary on the trip. Click the hyperlinks below to see each of these locations!

Day 1 - Lake Arrowhead / Bakersfield, California

Day 2 - Sequoia National Park, California

Day 3 - Kings Canyon National Park / Fresno, California

Day 4 - Yosemite National Park, California

Day 5 - Yosemite National Park, California

Day 6 - Yosemite National Park / Lone Pine, California

Day 7 - Death Valley, California / Las Vegas, Nevada

Day 8 - Las Vegas, Nevada

Camping:

Of the 7 nights that we were on vacation, 3 of these were spent camping in the Joy Tutus! We set this all up prior to leaving. We put Kaylee's mattress topper and all of our blankets in the tent and partially collapsed it for the drives. When we got to our camp sites, we were able to simply put the rods back together and prop the tent up. This took less than 10 minutes each time.

Proposal:

SHE SAID YES!! The ring did not quite fit, but we plan to get one customized at a later date. This is something that I knew I wanted to do on this trip, but wasn't quite sure when. I had the ring with me 24/7 just in case the moment arose and it finally did on our sunset hike to Inspiration Point! I was able to call Kaylee's parents a few days before in Bakersfield while she was sleeping in to get their blessing. The picture was taken from a log that perfectly held my phone. I was definitely acting weird trying to make everything just right, but that is not too unlike me luckily. After blacking out for a few minutes, we were finally engaged!

Driving:

We passed through some fun small towns along our drive!

Kaylee was excited to see snow all around us as we passed over the Sierras.

We got stuck in a hail storm for a few minutes.

The 3 pictures above are from Mono Lake. This was one of our quick detours that we did and it did not disappoint! The receding water level left behind the Tufa's (Rock formations). This lake is also a sister lake to The Great Salt Lake in Utah.