Last weekend my family and I headed up north to Calaveras Big Trees State Park roughly six hours north of Los Angeles in Arnold, CA. Since buying our teeny trailer we’ve been trying to hit the road as often as possible to explore the state (and to justify the cost of purchasing said trailer lol).

I first found Calaveras Big Trees Park when reading an article about where to go instead of visiting the most popular national parks. Calaveras was listed as an alternative to close by Yosemite which I haven’t been lucky enough to score a reservation at so it seemed like a great spot to visit. I used my trusted website campsitephotos.com to find their recs for specific campsites and was lucky to book #128, one of their favorite sites.

The drive up north was easy and beautiful, especially once pulling off the main highways and driving the last 2 or so hours to the park. We passed through tons of cute small towns like Sonora that I would love to explore someday. We arrived at the campsite right before dinner which gave us plenty of time to unhitch the trailer, get set up and explore a little before jumping into meal time, one of our personal favorite parts of camping.

The campsite itself is clean, easy to navigate and our site had tons of privacy. Although we could see neighbors everyone was respectful, quiet and friendly. Our four year old made friends with everyone she met on our frequent treks to the bathroom which was also perfectly acceptable (I’m not going to see the bathrooms were amazing, but this is camping so I didn’t have unrealistic expectations). I believe there were pay showers somewhere but I didn’t use them (or even see them). Each campsite has a picnic table, bear locker and really nice fire pit. One other note, make sure to buy and bring your firewood in. We bought ours at a small gas station on the drive in because I wasn’t sure if the visitor enter store would sell it (I later found out it doesn’t).

While we there we did several different hikes. The best place to start is the visitor center where you can get a map, talk to a guide and also score a little bit of wifi which you don’t have in the rest of the park. We decided to kick off the day with a hike around the north grove, which is where 9 out of 10 pics of yelp are from. Its a short 2 mile-ish loop that is stroller friendly/kid friendly/everyone friendly and it takes you through a beautiful trail of sequoia and pine trees as old as 3000 years. Make sure to grab one of the guides to learn more the different trees and sites that are numbered throughout the hike.

Our next hike was down to the river and while it was amazing I have one big warning…the map is totally wrong. The campground map indicates the river is a mile from the campsite but it’s actually closer to 2.5 miles each director up and down a steep mountain. We did the hike with out 4 year old and we survived but I did bribe her with a new lego set if she walked on her own because there was no way we could carry her up. In the end it was one of our favorite hikes ever but it was definitely a trek!

All in all this was an amazing trip and will definitely go down as one of my favorite family adventures. I can’t wait to get back to this park and enjoy the camp grounds again because they really were spectacular and I can’t recommend highly enough!