I won’t lie to you, it feels strange to finally be writing this post. I look back on our previous years (2015, 2016, and even 2018 in particular) and I feel like those are completely different people. That’s of course not to say that we don’t care about the national parks anymore, but the latter half of 2018 and essentially the entirety of 2019 was, to say the least, very rough. We had originally had plans to go to Rocky Mountain for Labor Day 2018, but then Brady had to have emergency surgery, which set us back in more ways than one. Then 2019 was just kind of a dumpster fire of a year (even our first attempt at a national park trip, which wasn’t even until THE END OF AUGUST, was effectively an unmitigated disaster) so I was determined to have a good time in Pinnacles for the big 3-0 (halfway at the time) and get us back on track.
Unfortunately for us, it rained the entire time of our short day trip from Monterey, but we were determined to still get a little hiking in. The rain had mostly abated by the time we hiked, but had flooded the caves we wanted to visit, and was definitely cold (it was almost December, after all). The rain still brought a unique beauty to the park, and I’m glad we got to experience it that way. Hopefully, our next trip will involve a little more sunshine and rock climbing!
Brady for scale!
Our Pinnacles National Park “Must Do”: The Balconies Cave hike on the west side (which we did) was really beautiful and easy, and would definitely be fun to explore the caves when they’re not filled with several inches of extremely cold water!
#BrenNP 