Pinnacles National Park

Huh? Never heard of it. Yeah, us neither.

This is another ones of those national parks that just happened to be a check list item and not sure what we were getting ourselves into when we booked it. I read that it only takes a day to visit, and it was one of the parks that was least visited - probably because it was a little off the beaten path and was more geared for rock climbers than family. Also, to its north is Yosemite and to its south is Sequoia National Parks - so it's probably not in consideration normally. In addition, this would be a good park to visit in the late fall, winter or spring, because we're visiting in July and it's in the 90s! But each park has it's own story and Pinnacles is no different with it's cool feature it has to offer!

Trip Details:

Where: Pinnacles National Park, CA

Campsite: Yanks RV Resort, Site B-27 - Highly recommend this campground

Length: 2 days

Itinerary:

Day 1: Relax/Pool Day

Day 2: Pinnacles National Park

Charlotte’s Highlights: Pool time at the campground

Paige’s Highlights: Hike though the cave!

Adult’s Highlights: Relax day with the hot tub and the cave was really cool!

Another relax and pool day!!! This campsite is probably the nicest we've been to on this trip in terms of cleanliness and modern aesthetics. It's only a 9 year old campground, has a pool and hot tub, and is located in a valley between two mountain ranges. The sites are on concrete slabs and the entire place is decorated with flowers.

When it comes to ambience, the Redwood's campsite has my heart since we were parked between two giant Redwood trees. But Yanks was a winner for the girls when it came to the pool!

The next day we got up early and explored Pinnacles National Park. The weather was going to get into the 90s today (but started off in the low 60s) so we knew we'd only get a morning of hiking in before the girls were going to be done!

There are two entrances (east and west entrance - and they are not connected and are a 1 hour drive to go around the park!). We stayed on the west side of Pinnacles, so we head into the west entrance first. Since this is such a small national park without many visitors each year, the west visitors center was closed Monday-Friday and only open only on the weekends 😆. So we knew we'd have to drive to the other side to get our junior ranger badges and trusty souvenirs we've been collecting at each visit. Each of us have jobs when we get to visitors centers:

- Aaron - help the girls find 2 postcards for them to write to their grandparents (Hi Grandma! Hi Gigi! Hi Pops!)

- Mary - Christmas ornament for our travel tree in the basement

- Paige - hiking medallion for her walking stick

- Charlotte - keychain (however she doesn't know what she's going to do with them all but it makes her happy so onward we go with keychains!)

This park is known for it's rock climbing and caves! Since we aren't rock climbers, we chose the cave routes instead! There are two caves in the park, Balconies Cave and Bear Gulch Cave. Unfortunately, the Bear Gulch Cave was closed for the majority of the summer due to the bats nursing season, so we headed to Balconies Cave instead!

We chose a 2.5 mile hike on Balconies Cave Trail and Loop which was very easy and only 400 feet elevation gain.

It was a great hike with nice views and a short cave. We planned accordingly and bought our flashlights because the cave got DARK. The girls loved the cave and climbing over and under boulders! Luckily, we didn't see any bats!

All in all, Pinnacles will be a one time visit for us. Glad we visited and got to do our first cave exploration! Thanks for coming on our adventure! Until next time….

~ Mary