20.7. Goodbye Yosemite - Hello Seqoia

Since we were so lucky to have the camping spot directly in Yosemite Valley, Klaus got up "early" and went for a bike ride in order to catch the perfect sunrise on El Capitan. The result were some 250 fotos or so of El Capitan in the sunrise which will take about 2 weeks to sort out.
When Klaus came back, the whole family was already out and about. Breakfast was ready -> Just the way it´s supposed to be!
After that, the plan was to find Camp4, the famous camp of all the climb freaks. Finding the camp was no problem. Finding a parking spot, however, was. So we did a loop in the Valley and found some climb freaks who were just hanging out at the side of the road with a "Ask the climber" banner. So we stopped and asked. One of them had just done the "nose" on El Capitan the three days before, with a friend age 16!!! He looked like he had done it, too, all bruised and scratched on arms and legs. He showed us the route he took, where he spent the first and second night and how it was. Also, he recommended us the "Pine line" on El Capitan base, because we actually wanted to go for a climb.
So we did another loop through the valley and approached the Pine Line. Not quite directly, but after a few detours, we did find the route! Supposedly, you could position a top rope easily with a 5.4 "scramble" to a pine tree in the middle of the wall. Klaus tried for about an hour to find that "scramble", but failed ;-(
So we put a top on another tree and did some nice crack climbing. There was an "easy" crack on the left, about 2cm wide, which all of us, including Selma (!) managed to climb. There was a harder one on the right, which of course only Erik "El Gekko" managed to do. It was boiling hot, one has to mention, and even the rock burned on your hands. So after the climbing adventure, we went for a swim in the Merced river.
Then we headed on to find a spot to eat. Selma actually cooked the noodles, but of course Klaus was unhappy with the view from the spot, so we went on to a picnick place with Selma standing in the RV holding the pots. The spot turned out to be the "valley view", but it was so hot that after lunch the whole family had to jump into the river again, with a direct view on El Cap in the river. What a wonderful way to say good-bye to Yosemite!
After that, and since Klaus had already reserved a campground in "Stony Creek" close to Seqoia, we went towards that other park. We did stop over close to the previous day´s campground, because during shopping, Klaus had discovered a frozen Yogurt joint in the mall, and he still owed an ice cream to Markus. Selma meanwhile went to the shoe store...
After that, it was just driving, and we arrived at Seqoia after crossing the completely desolate zones of the Central Valley. It was already dark when we entered the park. everyone thought that once in the park we would soon hit the campground, because of course Klaus booked a campground on the correct side of the park. But again, we had forgotten how everything is always bigger in the USA, so it took yet another hour, and we got to the campground really, really late... It turned out to be really quiet and (Klaus loved it!) cold campground. So everyone had a good night´ sleep to be ready for some beautiful walks through the Seqoia groves the next day. But that's another story, of course!