Blogs from Sequoia National Park, California, United States, North America - page 5

We drag ourselves out of cold beds to another chilly morning. Breakfast in the restaurant today: Liam has french toast with bacon, Joseph fried eggs on toast, Ky just bacon while I have 2 fried eggs on a ham steak with 2 pancakes on the side. The waitress makes a couple of mistakes with the order and gives us a 20% discount. Nice! Suitably nourished, we drove about 45 minutes along the General Grants Highway to Lodgepole Village. There we looked around at the displays and watched a movie about bears while Ky had the washing going at the laundromat. A medium sized brown coloured black bear (only 35% of black bears are actually coloured black in colour) was looking for food about 10m above the road. Liam and I watched him/her (I wasn't about to ... read more

The day dawned chilly and foggy. Yep. Still in San Francisco. But not for long. I picked up our next hire car at the Ellis St Hertz, just a dogleg's block away. This time a bright red PT Cruiser. The kind that scratches really easily. With no GPS option, we knew how to get to the 101 and freeway from our trip to San Jose, so found our way onto the 80 east. That took us across the five lane double decker Bay Bridge. It spans further than the Golden Gate Bridge and I think it is more of an engineering marvel than the GGB, just not so picturesque. From there we just followed the highway and google map directions to get to Grant Grove Village in the Kings Canyon National park. From the 108, there ... read more

Here are the Sequoia Nat'l. Park pictures and all I can say is pictures REALLY don't do the giants justice. These trees are towering giants and a miralce of nature. We are so impressed with the National Parks out here, this is one branch of the government that works right!! I should explain a couple of things. The tree you see on it's side once had a family living in it and in the 1870's they made it into the first hotel ever in this area. Folks would pay for it's protection and a place to sleep. On pictures # 267,269 & 270 this the General Grant tree, too large to get in one photo. It is the second largest tree in the world.... read more

Sequoia in the Winter (January 2010)- Absolutely beautiful. Took a three day trip staying at Wuksachi Lodge going snowshoeing and seeing the biggest tree in the world, The General Sherman, a Sequoia tree. We decided to snowshoe the Topokah Valley Trail up to Tokopah falls going against advice of park officials because they said it was dangerous ice(isn't that way we have snowshoes on?). It was about a 3 1/2 mile round trip. The falls was amazing being mostly frozen over but still flowing under the ice and visibly flowing at breaks in the ice. A lot of the popular places in Sequoia like the tunnel tree and Crystal Caves are closed in the winter, but the trip is worth it to see the half frozen falls and untouched snow covering the ground, its also a ... read more

A few photos from my trip to California earlier this year. Coming up in future posts: Las Vegas, NV; Deception Pass, WA; a Colorado potpourri; and Dyer, IN. Safe travels.... read more