Sequoia

From Wikipedia – This park protects the Giant Forest, which boasts some of the world’s largest trees, the General Sherman being the largest measured tree in the park. Other features include over 240 caves, a long segment of the Sierra Nevada including the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States, and Moro Rock, a large granite dome.

Established: 9/25/1890
Annual Visitors: 1,229,594
Size: 404,063 acres

Happy Cinco de Mayo 2021!

Sequoia is a seven letter word with all five vowels in it! We thought that was pretty cool.

My Yogi bedtime tea tag said: Life is best lived by focusing on your goals and dancing through all other distractions. I like that one. Thought I would share.

We stayed in Three Rivers, CA last night and will do the same tonight. According to Wikipedia:

Three Rivers is an unincorporated community in Tulare County, California, United States. Located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada at the edge of the San Joaquin Valley, the town is near the entrance to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. The town’s name comes from its location near the junction of the North, Middle, and South Forks of the Kaweah River.

The town is at 843 feet in elevation with a little over 2,400 people. We drove to 6,500 feet this morning, in about an hour, up the very windy two-way road with sheer thousand foot plus cliffs alternating between driver’s and passengers’ side of the road. Can you say Dramamine! The views are amazing though!

This is actually entering the park yesterday from Kings Canyon
Fun information on the sign entering from Three Rivers
View of the river before heading up, up, up

We stopped at the Foothills Visitor Center where our good friend Craig, who lives a mile from us in Phoenix, volunteered for three months recently. He mentioned a couple rangers to say hello to while we were there, and we met one of them, Cristina. She is was happy to chat with us about her experiences as a ranger. She’s from Los Angeles, bilingual (Spanish) and is on her way to work at Mount Rainier National Park next. As we were talking to her, it was sunny and going to be 95 in town today, so being at a mountain that basically has snow on it all year long and the weather is always chillier in the summer, she was really excited! She spent time at another park in Texas where she was in charge of the dangerous mussel infestation in lakes that gets carried via boats going from one body of water to the next. There are some interesting jobs out there that most of us do not know about. These rangers save all kinds of species from invading the ecosystems in this nation. Thank you for your jobs rangers!

Our first stop was Tunnel Rock, a large granite boulder that covered the original road. Park visitors would drive underneath it. The road has since been rerouted. We were being a bit silly and risky but the pictures were fun to take.

Gary and Rangeley standing in the middle of the old road.
Rangeley being good and not pulling
Elizabeth with the new road bypassing the “Tunnel Rock”
A lizard watching the goings on from the top of Tunnel Rock.

Hospital Rock is just up the road from Tunnel Rock. It has an interesting history in that 500 Potwisha Native American once lived there as early as 1350. The rock’s name came from two different incidences in the 1800’s where men were medically taken care of, for a broken leg and a gun shot wound, at this location by the Potwisha people. See pictures of the rock art on the quartzite boulders and the mortar and pestle holes they made to grind acorns to flour.

Stone stairs leading to the rock art on ivory straight edge of boulder on left, Hospital Rock
Rock art, Hospital Rock
The holes where Native Americans ground acorns
Rangeley watching Elizabeth go to Hospital Rock
OK, I’ll just play in the tall grass while I wait for Elizabeth

We continued up, up, up the serpentine road…hairpin turns, whoa! the edge is close! Once above 6,000’ the trees get big and the climbing stops. Generals Highway has to split at one point to accommodate for three trees in the road. (see pic)

Scenery on our serpentine road in and out of Sequoia
All the white areas across the lower half of photo is the road we drove!
Road, lower left and middle of picture
Yucca Plants in full bloom

Driving through the forest above 6,000′, notice car size at bottom of picture
The road splits to go between the trees

The Giant Forest Museum is at the road’s split to go to Crescent Meadows. It is not open due to COVID right now but they had rangers at outdoor tents to answer questions and chat with. The Sentinel, a tree at this small visitor village, is 257 feet tall and the park has a wonderful way to give you a visual of just how tall that actually is. At one end of the village is an engraved stone marker of the tree’s base and they have laid a strip of stone the 257 feet to the other end of the village to indicate the length on the ground. See picture of where Gary took the photo at the tree’s base marker and me a..l..l t..h..e w..a..y over to the top of the tree marker. Impressive visual.

Elizabeth trying to see the top of the 257′ tall Sentinel Tree
On the sidewalk they have the Sentinel Tree engraved in stone horizontally to give you a feel for how tall it is.
Elizabeth standing “on top” of the Sentinel tree while Gary takes her picture from the “bottom”. See white arrow.
Tree by the parking lot.

These markers/signs are throughout the Giant Forest Museum village

Next it was off to Auto Log, Tunnel Log and Crescent Meadow where we had lunch. I love the historical photos of what was where I am standing right now. Our lunch spot was a remote, 4 mile drive east into the park and a place the park warns you about bears, day or night. Unfortunately, there were a few other park visitors at this location so, no bear sightings : (

Gary about to drive through the Tunnel Log
BTW – The General Grant tree has a base diameter of 40 feet.
Before the CCC carved the tunnel out
The top of Auto Log. You can no longer drive on it.

Awesome roots of these majestic trees!
Same base, but showing the fallen trunk.

This is the picnic area we had lunch – Crescent Meadow. Notice the table to the right of the sign.
What happens when you bring a bag of chips to 6,000′ plus.
Random trees at Crescent Meadow
So many interesting historic stories in our wonderful parks.
Gary has climbed this face and hung out in this hut.
This little guy wanted our lunch : )
Practicing photography on the Steller Jays again.

Our last stop up the Generals Highway was to see the famous General Sherman Tree. Rangeley remained with Gary in the former dump site repurposed parking lot while I walked the half mile one way to the tree. The black top and stone walkway descends from the large general parking area. (the Accessible parking and path are closer to the tree). The old parking area was torn up and 2.5 acres were “given back” to the forest!

There are several locations to view General Sherman on the ½ mile walk. One is looking down at the tree, another looking up at the tree’s base and the third looking up at it at full length/height from below. We loved the towering and huge based trees in Redwood National Park but this tree is very different in that Giant Sequoia’s trunks thickens as it grows, and stays fairly thick, all the way up to the top of the tree. Unlike other species of trees that are wide at the base and tapper to the top. This particular tree’s truck is 14 feet wide… 180 feet off the ground! The thickness of this World’s Largest Tree, General Sherman, makes it very impressive. Enjoy the tree and the informational signs.

We drove down Generals Highway for the second time. We took this exit out of Sequoia, from Kings Canyon National Park, the day before. You can read our previous post about Kings Canyon for more details and photos of these adjoining national wonders. It was 71 degrees at General Sherman Tree and a 95 Phoenix-like temperature in Three Rivers an hour or so later.

The General Sherman Tree. Can you see the person in the pink shirt at the base?
Random guy at base for size comparison.
The holes/black spots are where there had been fire damage over hundreds of years in this cross section
Can you count the rings? Each line is a year!

We enjoyed dinner at River View Restaurant, on the Kaweah River. We each had a great local Eel River Brewing Mocha Stout and Gary loved his hamburger with pastrami and swiss. My burger with sautéed mushrooms and swiss was delicious with extra pickles! And, yes, we both had a salad too! Rangeley was a bit tortured as the large, airy patio literally stood beside the gushing river providing a soothingly loud roar of the water tumbling over the rocks below our table. Rangeley could hear the river calling! The owner opened in the spring of 2020 and never required masks to be worn. The staff and almost all patrons did not have masks on. We loved the refreshing feeling of being able to see facial expressions and clearly hear conversations with wait staff and surrounding guests.

We are headed to Lone Pine, CA to see Mount Whitney next. I never wanted to know too much about the vertical terrain Gary climbed on the two Mountaineer Route trips he took to the top of Whitney, until now, after the climbs : ) We will stay in Lone Pine and hike a bit around Whitney’s base. We will spend one night before Whitney, in Bakersfield, CA, to visit my step brother. We are sad to come to the realization that after Whitney, Death Valley National Park is our last adventure before driving back to Phoenix.