This edition of Full Belly Files was originally emailed to subscribers on April 1, 2022. To receive Matt Kettmann’s food newsletter in your inbox each Friday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
Big trees and bigger cliffs. That was the gist of my family’s recent spring break excursion into the well-populated wilds of Sequoia and Yosemite, where I hadn’t been for about 30 years.
The trip was prompted by a unique combination of Omicron-powered reticence — over booking plane flights back in January when we briefly considered reviving our canceled March 2020 adventure to Spain — and elementary school access, in that all families of 4th-graders get free National Park passes. We didn’t want to worry about COVID for two months if we opted for Europe, so instead we decided to do a California road trip, which had a much better chance of not being waylaid by viral surges or, as events further unfolded, war.
