Holiday Greetings from Dan & Lesli

Greetings from the California Kendall’s home – land of sunshine, lollipops and…swine flu? Here’s what we’ve been up to.

A year ago we finally began construction on terracing the hillside that has been 2/3rds of our backyard. With contributions from the whole family it is now a vibrate series of gardens: lavenders, succulents, tropicals – highlighted by a produce garden that started yielding vegetables in July and hasn’t stopped yet!

CHARLOTTE (9) capped off her dose of H1N1 with a 105° temperature! She rallied in time for a pre-Thanksgiving trip to Sequoia National Park where we hiked, saw bears, coyotes, giant trees and played cards by roaring fires. Charlotte’s softball team made it to the championship game – she played 3^rd base and team clown. Her birthday was a big “camping” party in our backyard – complete with s’mores, hot dogs and 10 girls ‘camping’ in our family room (10 girls+1 room = 0 sleep)! This was her first year in the school choir and sang wonderfully in their holiday concert this week. She enjoyed seeing Dan’s family in October for cousin Evan’s wedding.

SAVANNAH (12) spent a week in spring at Ocean Science School – a school-sponsored sleep-away camp. Getting braces during the summer didn’t phase her during our camping trip with friends & neighbors – this year was the spectacular El Capitan State Beach. In her 6^th year of Hula dancing, she is a stand-out at the performances – not only for her grace, but her blond hair! In her 5^th year of choir, she is a gifted performer (but then I am her parent!). An avid reader and aspiring teenager, she finished the entire Twilight series in 4 months.In August, both girls also attended a sleep-away camp in the mountains south of LA – Savannah’s trip was cut short when she got HER dose of swine flu. She recovered in time to enjoy our Labor Day trip to Palm Springs.

In addition to breathing life into our backyard garden, LESLI (young at heart) and friends created Trash-free Tuesday and a garden at Charlotte’s school – giving some of the kids their first taste of fresh zucchini and other produce. Her vocal stance on all things green won an appointment to a local government environmental committee (she was sworn in!). She feels no visit to our home is complete unless you’ve seen her composting bin. (Seriously.) Having missed her 20th class reunion, she volunteered to be committee chairperson for her 30^th reunion happening in 2010.

In addition to dragging his family to Sequoia, DAN (age = IQ) planned a coastal California summer vacation where we met friends, camped in Big Sur, infiltrated the blue-bloods in Pebble Beach and rode the roller coasters at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

He fantasizes that Charlotte’s softball team success is due to his half-assed assistant coaching. In this economy he held onto his job of 5 years like a barnacle clinging to a rock. His basketball skills would be at a new level if his body wasn’t 47 years old. He still needs no excuse to take the family to the beach and loves talking football with his dad.

That's how 2009 was for us - to borrow a phrase from Johnny Mercer - we're doing our best to accentuate the positive and latch on to the affirmative. With that spirit we hope 2010 brings you joy up to the maximum and gloom down to the minimum. -Dan, Lesli, Savannah, Charlotte & Sydney. December 2009
Dan: dankenla@gmail.com
Lesli: leslikendall@gmail.com

Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park

The girls had the full week off for Thanksgiving, so we explored Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park in the Sierra Nevada mountains before we went to San Diego for the holiday. Second oldest park behind Yellowstone, it is chock-full of vistas, critters and those amazing giant trees.

We arrived to cloudy weather, and Charlotte was recovering from swine flu, so we took it easy on the first day. Despite these setbacks, photo opportunities were under (and over) every rock...
At the south entrance of the park is a sequence of ancient Indian petroglyphs ...
As we ascended to the mid-mountain range (6-7,000 feet) we entered the clouds and discovered our first critter - this medium-sized black bear!
Before arriving at our overnight lodge, we got our first glimpse of some of the forest giants...

Our home for the first couple nights is Wuksachi Lodge. Only 10 years old, but built in the style of grand old park lodges of the west, it is beautiful!Here is the awesome restaurant. The setting, service & food would be considered wonderful anywhere, and is really amazing considering the next available food is 90-minutes away!

Our room had a small den behind sliding doors. Here Savannah enters the room and the den is through the opening in the center of the picture...Both the weather and Charlotte's health were remarkably better on day-two. We started with a short but steep hike to the top of Morro Rock. Here is Savannah about three-quarters of the way up...
There are 400 stairs to the top and Savannah counted 'em all...
The peak is 6,725 feet above sea level. From here you can actually see the Coastal mountain range 135 miles away
November 2009 - the Kendalls and the Sierras

Behind us are the Sierra foothills and, below the clouds is the San Joaquin (Central) Valley of California...
Here is one of the fallen giants with a clever car tunnel. If you're wondering, yeah it is fun to drive your car through it!
A couple of Sequoia-sized squirrels acting nutty...

This is the root system of an toppled Sequoia. It is kind of hard to get a sense of the scale...
Until you add a 6' 4" person to the picture!
It's a real challenge to photograph these behemoths - they're so big!
Another hike and Charlotte has found a fallen Sequoia that was hollowed by disease. Not only could she stand up in it, when she went deeper into the tree...

She found an exit to the hollowed-out tree!
Big tunnel tree. Little girl. Lots of fun...
I urge you to click on this photo below. If you do, you might be able to tell that the colorful blob to the left of the base of the tree are two adults! Man! these things are big!
Your guide Savannah wants you to know that fire is a regular visitor to the giant forests. In fact, the trees depend on fire in their reproductive cycle...

The most famous denizen of the forest is the General Sherman tree. Based on volume, this claims to be the largest living thing on earth. While Dan liked the tree, he holds no love for it's namesake who burned a path from Atlanta to Savannah during the Civil War...

Here is almost the whole thing - the largest living thing on earth...
We camped here about 10 years ago. Savannah was 13 months old and bears were all over our campground! Here is the snow-covered campground today - good thing we camped in August!!
On our way back to Wuksachi Lodge we met this guy hitching a ride. It wasn't our first coyote, but undoubtedly the boldest. Not a hint of fear in his demeanor...
Back in the lodge we brought some libations and playing cards to the great room and taught the girls how to play Hearts in front of the cast-iron stove and floor-to-ceiling windows...
Savannah made a new friend. Charlotte is not so sure...
Just after sunset, we walked back to our room to clean up for dinner. The moon was on the rise and left of the Moon, Jupiter was climbing in lock-step!
A time-lapse photo of the lodge. The big horizontal bar of light was a car driving by...


We checked out on Monday and headed for our next lodge in King's Canyon. The girls enjoyed the luggage cart so much they wanted to take it on our next hike!
and boy did we hike!


and hike...

...and hike! We hiked so far from the Giant Forest that Charlotte found a forest where she was a giant...
and then she found the forest of vaudeville stages
And here we are at our hike's end - the top of Little Baldy - 8,044 feet up!


We saw mule deer does on the way up, and the views from the top were fantastic...
Some of us were a little tired after the 1,000 foot vertical hike up...

Back down the mountain and back into another grove of Sequoias just in time for sunset...
I didn't know the nation had a Christmas tree, but here it is. I wouldn't want to put lights on it!
Confusingly, this tree is named after another civil war general remebered for questionable ethics. Perhaps the poor choices for names explains why they discontinued the naming of Sequoias about 80 years ago...
Lesli's folks had visited the General Grant tree about a month earlier and Margie had an unfortunate tumble here, cutting her knee, ripping her jeans and just generally getting a full-body whomp. Since we are nothing if not crass and unsympathetic asses, we all took turns recreating Margie's fall at the General Grant tree...




Our accomodations for the last night of our stay was the John Muir Lodge, named after arguably the most influential civilian in creating our national parks. Someday Charlotte will be glad I took this picture...
The John Muir Lodge also had a nice Great Room with game, tables and a huge, roaring fireplace. During a game of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" Charlotte got the astronomical question: "What is a Red Dwarf?" Without missing a beat her response: "Grumpy". That's Charlotte...
Here are the rest of us, and how we generally look when we're playing games with Charlotte...


No family vacation is complete without an after-dinner game of Twister...

Here is the exterior of the John Muir Lodge. The porches were communal...
The last day and we knew Kings Canyon was closed for the winter, but we drove as close as we could and discovered that we HAVE to go back and see Kings Canyon in the summer...
We turned a corner on the twisty canyon road and whoops! We drove right upon a group of prisoners working with the fire department to create fire breaks. It was a dose of reality to see gold teeth and dew (doo?) rags this far away from...anything!

A girl that brings her own binoculars. Man! she knows how to win Dan's heart!
Some of the best fall foliage we saw. In one of the smaller canyon spurs off of Kings Canyon...
We stopped along the middle fork of the Kings River...
The last time Charlotte was this close to running water in a National Park she was under it (see our Yosemite blog). Naturally, she is a little apprehensive.
ain't it pretty?

Our last driving tour was 10-mile road which included Lake Hume, an alpine lake at 5,000 feet.
Now, I know this curve is sharp, but isn't that just a little too slow?
Our last stop was the stump forest - a Sequoia grove that was completely logged with the exception of this one tree...
Sad though they are, the stumps allow one to touch, feel, even climb on something that was once the anchor of a 2,000-year-old legend...
Lesli has plans to make a hot-tub in this one...
SBK inside a stump. I think she's still there (grin!)...
a stump with a Charlotte-sized natural door...
If you visit it, remember it is a Charlotte -sized door...


Four days, three nights, dozens of hikes, hundreds of miles in the car and SBK still has a smile on her face...
And then we were done! We drove home, re-packed our suitcases and headed to San Diego for Thanksgiving. But we'll always remember the stately, silent, ageless Giant Sequoias...
Next up...the holidays! Until then, Mahalo and Mele Kalikimaka!