Hospital rock and mountain creek pools

Heading up into the park (August 28), we stopped at Hospital rock to see the petroglyphs, and to do a short hike along a mountain creek.

The petroglyphs are on a part of the rock where a big chunk has cleaved off, leaving a flat surface:

This shows where it cleaved, off to the left.  It's a really big rock, you can walk into that open area underneath it:

This was the site of another acorn-grinding area for a village, those pits in the rock (which is beside Hospital rock) are where they did the grinding.

Hospital rock got that name in the late 1800's when an injured person was tended to there while they waited to transport him.

After seeing the rock, we hiked along a mountain stream and saw some natural pools along the way:

Along this trail, we saw some trees with really interesting red bark:

Just another spectacular mountain view from near the trailhead:

Next, we're going to drive up the switchback road that takes us into the Sequoia forest...