Sequoia National Park

Sunday, October 27, 2013

Our first stop this morning was the Foothills Visitor Center in Sequoia National Park. After getting our books stamped and looking around the center, we went across the street to the picnic area and fixed some breakfast. The sun felt great as we enjoyed eating outside. We soon had some company in the trees, and had four or five acorn woodpeckers wanting some of our food. They were somewhat aggressive and wished they could get inside the campers for some food.

After breakfast we went on up the road that is not advised for vehicles over 22 feet long. We are only a foot or two longer than that, and we were not prohibited, so on we went.  It wasn’t too scary because there were nice rock guardrails, and lots of trees so you couldn’t see any sheer drop off. It was a long slow grind to the top! There were many very tight switchbacks, but we took it slow and made it just fine. We used lots of turn outs to let traffic go by us and some just to stop and see the sights such as tunnel rock, where you could see the old road had gone through. That would have been the end of our travels without the road going around it.

Soon we came to the Giant Forest section of the park. There are several groves of sequoias throughout the park, but this is the most accessible.

We stopped at the Giant Forest museum and VC where the Sentinel tree is located. There is a line in the pavement that shows how far it would be to climb it. There were some interesting displays in the VC, one being a jar smaller than a quart mason jar that had 91,000 sequoia seeds in it. Another was a large wheel that shows how little chance there is for a sequoia to survive when it sprouts from a seed.

The sequoia is larger around, but the redwood trees are taller.

Continuing on down the road, we stopped at another VC for a stamp, but it was closed for the season, so we went on to Kings Canyon NP. We were very fortunate to be there the day we were because the next day they expected snow. While in the Kings Canyon VC we saw that forecast, and decided to get on down to a lower elevation while we had the chance, rather than find a camping spot up there. We did not take the one hour drive out along the canyon, but scurried on down the road toward Fresno.

We stopped at a Wendy’s in Clovis for something to keep us going, and then took 41 out toward Yosemite National Park. It was dark as we entered the park, and the sign at the entrance said Tioga pass was closed. We had hoped to get across the next morning. There was a campground about five miles down the road from the entrance, so we found that and did our best to wind up in a real campsite in the complete darkness! Not a light in the whole campground area, and really hard to do by headlights, but we got settled in and crashed. It had been a long day!