"Trees are poems that the earth writes upon the sky." ~ Khalil Gebran
Just a quick and beautiful 2 hour-ish drive from the Sacramento area is a Park that is definitely worth a day trip: Calaveras Big Trees State Park. It's got lots of family friendly hiking, some absolutely stunning gigantic trees, and if you're super lucky you'll see some wildlife too!
The drive from our area down highways 49 and 4 is such a pretty one, one of those you just love to stare out the window.
We were there on a little bit of a chilly day, so it's smart to bring some layers. We headed to the Visitor Center for a map and then headed off to explore on one of the trails. The trails there are very easy to navigate and hike on for the most part. Of course we stopped for lots of viewing of the amazing trees and pics.
Then we happened upon this tree, which was the biggest we had seen this day.
The main loop was kind of short for us, so we decided to venture off onto one of the other trails that climbed a little elevation and was just a little more challenging to hike, but still completely doable for the kids.
That when we got this huge surprise!
A bear family complete with 2 little cubs. Of course my first instinct was to run because we didn't see the mama bear. Eventually we found her a ways away foraging in some bushes.
She definitely knew we were there, but she was a safe distance away for us to take a few pics. We decided to just turn around at this point since continuing on the trail would actually lead us closer to the bears. But it was quite a sight!
We then started heading home and caught the beginnings of a beautiful sunset through the trees on the way back to our car.
It was another great day of exploring!
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