Kings Canyon

Journal:

6/10/12:  Today I will back country camp for the first time on my move west if I can find this national forest area north of here and camp on the sand dunes near Lake Michigan and away from people for the first time since I started this voyage.

6/9/13:  Woke up in the mountains of Kings Canyon National Park.  Saw the sun rise on snow-capped peaks and the sun light up Happy Valley (I don't know it's real name, so I named it).  Hiked three miles through the quiet calm of the forest until I saw my beloved wagen wheel waiting for me.  Left the Wolverton trail and drove west five hours back to the city.  It had been nine months since I last camped in the wilderness, back in September when I first entered California and checked out Redwood National Park.  This weekend road trip and adventure was just what I needed.  While camping I met a married couple who happened to be camping on the other side of a large rock, even though neither of us were supposed to be camping in that area because our permits had put us somewhere else.  I introduced myself and they invited me to their campfire, and we told each other adventure stories.  I think he won with his inspiring story about braving the chaos of Mexico and smuggling his wife across the border so they could be together.  They still are, twenty years later.  He said that even though they didn't speak the same language and he thought he had been rejected the first time and spent a week crying over her, he went back to get her anyway.  It turned out she had been crying over him and the miscommunication too.  There's a lot more to this entire adventure, and I just wrote about 8,000 words about it, but it's too much to rush out in a blog post just yet.  In other news, I got filmed by the director of my school for the first time today.  I was teaching the class about the frontier, science and the creation of the world wide web.  My boss gave me the thumb's up as he left.