Ockey Family Adventures: San Francisco Day 6

Pinnacles was an interesting National Park.

We said a reluctant goodbye to Monterey early Wednesday morning. We wanted to visit Pinnacles, a fairly new national park, and we knew it would take most of the day. This is because Pinnacles has an east side and a west side, and it's an hour and a half drive between the two. We started out on the west side, which is much more primitive. In fact, there were not even any rangers and the building was locked up tight. So we took a picture at the sign and drove to the parking lot at the end of the road. It was narrow, windy, and one-lane, but we made it all the way to the Balcony Cliffs Trailhead.

This was the closest thing to a ranger we found.

Our first hike was easy and really cool. We made a short loop up the mountain. On the way back, the trail passed through a cave. We ventured in, but it was very dark, and someone sent us in the wrong direction. Eventually, we made it back into the cave, and we did find a dark and forbidding passage through the rock. The hike turned out to be really awesome, climbing through pitch-black narrow passages over the fallen rock.

Pinnacles is a small park, but has some pretty scenery.

Mom and Dad love adventuring together.

Pinnacles is known for its unique rock formations.

And also the Talus Caves, which are caves formed by rock falls.

It was so fun to go caving.

Some parts of the cave were pitch black.

This cave had more crawling and climbing.

We are checking national parks off our list.

The boys loved exploring around the rocks.

We had such a great time that we decided to try a second hike in this area. This one was called the Tunnel Trail, and it was quite a bit longer and a lot steeper. In fact, we almost didn't make it to the tunnel. We had hiked and climbed and climbed and hiked until we were ready to give up. Just then three girls came around the corner. "Are we close to the tunnel?" we asked. They were pretty certain that we weren't. Some of us wanted to turn back, but Seth pushed us to continue. It was only a few hundred yards to the trail split and only a hundred more past that to the tunnel. The girls must have come from the other direction. Best of all, as we were taking pictures outside of the tunnel, Mark spotted two condors. They were the only ones we saw, so we were really excited!

Dax loves to hold hands and hike with Mom or Dad.

This hike was quite a climb.

Mark kept a good look out for condors.

We were so glad that we made it to the tunnel.

This tunnel is cut through the wall.

And we did see two condors!

The tunnel was the perfect turn around point.

Mom and Dad seem to end up matching more and more these days.

The rock formations are pretty.

We loved the cool temperature of the tunnel.

After we finished our hikes, we drove all the way around to the east side of Pinnacles. We had difficulty finding a ranger over there, too, but eventually we got our Junior Ranger badges and found some patches to go with them. Then we ate a quick lunch before heading off to our final hike.

Pinnacles National Park made getting a Junior Ranger very difficult.

We saw these pigs and for just a second thought they were javelinas. Unfortunately, it was just a group of tame pigs.

We did spot a few coyotes on this trip.

This last hike was through another tunnel of crumbled rock. It was called Bear Gulch Cave. We easily handled the distance though we were still worn out. The cave was really interesting, too. This one was more developed, with steps and handrails, but there was a lot of climbing and ducking, too. The cave was really long for a rock fall cave, and we were glad for the headlamps. We took a lot of pictures and enjoyed ourselves.

Bear Gluch Cave trail was more traveled.

This trail was also a lot greener.

We made the best of this long day.

The boys loved having their headlamps.

This trail was much simpler than the last climb we had done.

The rock formations weren't as interesting on this side.

Mom had so much fun exploring these caves.

We also spotted an acorn woodpecker.

We grabbed In N Out back near the Webb's house. Then we all piled into cars and drove to an ice cream place. Rocko's Tacos was the most interesting ice cream place we've tried. They stuff ice cream in a waffle taco shell, dip it in liquid nitrogen, add a chocolate covering and sprinkles, and dip it again. It was really delicious. Too bad it is so far from home!

The boys enjoyed spending the rest of the evening with cousins. Dax played football with Esther. Mark and Daniel played duets on the piano, and Seth and Charlie disappeared together. We were ready to get back to Utah, but it had been a great Spring Break!