October 30: Sequoia and back to Vegas

 Well, that’s it. We fly home tomorrow. We’ve had a great time.  We've been gone 10 days. This trip was basically to see The Wizard of Oz at the Las Vegas Sphere and to celebrate Paul's birthday with a trip to three national parks.

We woke up in Sequoia National Park to this temperature. However, I will tell you in our travels, we got up to 86º in the Mojave Desert. Vegas is 74º. Our trip back took well over 8 hours.

Our only stop in Sequoia was to see the General Sherman tree, the largest tree on earth. When we pulled into the parking lot, a deer jumped out in front of us. Luckily we weren't close but it was a little scary.

 The path was quite steep, but at least it was paved. Steps were in several places, and my left hip was not happy! But I soldiered on. 

I did not go all the way down but stopped at the viewpoint. The General Sherman is in the middle of this photo. Paul DID make it to the bottom.

Here's a closer view.

Paul posed our "flat Stanley" Marvin in front of the tree at my request. 

There was a grove of trees all around the General.

This is the path as we started back up. Ugh! 

It was only about a mile round trip but the uphill took a little longer because I had to stop after steps. Not only am I not in great shape, but the air is thinner there.

They provided these seats every once in a while. I took advantage of every one except once.

The road out of Sequoia NP was long and winding! Some S curves were at 10 mph. 

We finally made it to flat land.

In the valleys we saw tons of windmills, solar farms and agriculture. 

Big windmills on top; baby windmills below.

Here's what gas cost on the Nevada side of the California border.

We went back to the same Embassy Suites as we had before. But this time we had a different view. This is near sunset.

After their evening reception (drinks and snacks at the bar), we went down to the restaurant and split a quesadilla -- very good! Tomorrow we will have a free breakfast buffet here. I love Embassy Suites! Our suite includes a living area and then a sleeping area. Lots of plugs. A microwave and refrigerator, as well as coffee maker. I highly recommend them, especially when traveling with kids!

Well, that's it for these blogs. We're not sure when or where our next trip will be! Stay tuned!

For those of you who are not sure of how a blog works, just navigate to the daily blog by clicking on the links on the left side of the page. The ones here are the ones from this trip, but there are others from other trips. I hope you enjoy the pictures.