We are planning a camping trip, and can't decide whether to go to Sequoia National Park, staying in the Mineral Springs area- or to Inyo National Forest (staying in Sawmill or Tioga Lake). We want a majestic, foresty place with nice streams and lakes. Any advice?

At Sequoia, it is the trees that really steal the show. There are wonderful groves with giant sequoias, alpine meadows, and so on. There are some rivers and creeks, although I don't think there are any lakes to speak of.

We camped there last summer in Lodgepole campground, which is sort of in the middle of the park. It is a rather large campground, but divided into smaller sections. Our site was next to the Kawaeh (sp?) river, which was great because in the hot afternoons we could take our camp chairs down and sit in the river.

Here is a link to my pictures from the trip so you can see what the park is like:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/jen_co...=/5e5c&.src=ph

I have not been to Inyo as an adult, so hopefully someone else can give you some advice for that.

Thanks for sharing J. I haven't been to Sequoia NP since I was a kid. Time to go back.

It was definitely a good trip. It was a little hotter than I generally like, which made wandering around the meadows kind of buggy. I would definitely recommend morning hikes rather than afternoon like we did. The river made an exellent afternoon hang out. We put our camp chairs in the shallows and had a fabulous time.

Loved your pics! It brought back memories of when we had a house in Pinehurst, a small little town outside of the Park. Love Stoney Creek, I vote for Sequoia. Very nice streams here for trout fishing. It's where my daughter caught her first fish. ***kim***

Thanks I was just looking at those pictures again and marvelling at the wonderful lack of poison oak in those woods. We just got back from camping at Limekiln State Park along the Big Sur coast and the poison oak was quite prolific. Late rains and a lot of them have made everything grow - the forest was absolutely gorgeous, but we spent a lot of time avoiding the poison oak on our hikes.

VeniceCa---when you ask for this information "fast"--does that mean you are going soon? Sawmill and Tioga Lake are both above 9,000 feet in elevation---won't they still be under snow?

Mineral King was a very soggy place over Memorial Day weekend. Raging creeks of snowmelt prevented us from hiking anywhere out of the immediate valley.

Ditto the beauty of the Sequoia groves, especially around Giant Forest!

The Kaweah river was HUGE, beware of big water for another couple of months.

(Got the worst carsickness of my life on the road out of Mineral King...)

Oh duh, just noticed that veniceCA mentioned Mineral Springs, not King...