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Published: July 24th 2010
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We woke up bright and early at 6:30 for 2 reasons; to get a good round of fishing in before the 2-day California license expired, and to see the trees as soon as possible. We completed our normal routine of Jenn cooking breakfast while I broke down the tent and got everything packed up. One break in the routine was a wild animal about 20-yards from us; a mule deer with a medium rack of antlers chewing on some grass. None of the other campers had seen it (even though he was in their site), but I pointed it out to Jenn, and took the super-zoom camera over to snag a few pictures. Then, while Jenn washed dishes, I got the fishing gear rigged up. The fly-rod already had a dry-fly on it (which had drawn the rise the night before), but I felt that a bead-head wooly bugger may get the fish to really latch on. So, I prepared my vest, tied on the new fly and headed down to the river in sandals, swim trunks, and a vest—what a life.
I moved all over the river, and changed flies several times—looking under rocks and watching the water for
the natural bait that were around. However, despite all of my lessons from Ron, I couldn’t draw a bite. Jenn came down, and I cast a for a while more while she read the park newspaper. Then, we decided we had to see these trees.
We took off with a real destination—the “Giant Forest”—so named by John Muir, a true poet and hero of Jenn’s and mine (and a LOT of other people). It took awhile to get there, but all of the sudden we came around a curve and WHAM! The most enormous frickin’ tree we had ever seen. We swerved and slowed on the road because we were too in awe to pay attention to something trivial like ‘driving’. So we pulled over, and ran up to the tree. We were both near tears by the awesomeness of this tree. It dwarfed EVERYTHING else in the forest, from the tallest , to the thickest oak, this was HUGE! We took a ton of pictures, smelled it, knocked on it (it made a strange hollow sound), felt it (the bark was spongey), hugged it (6 of me couldn’t have wrapped around it), and just stood looking straight up
it. The branches don’t start for SOOOO long up the tree. It’s just straight girth, for hundreds of feet.
We knew this was only the beginning, so Jenn took over the wheel so I could admire my life dream. These giants were everywhere, and I’ve never exclaimed “OH MY GOD!” or “HOLY SH*T!” so many times in so little time. We made it to the Giant Forest museum, grabbed our cameras, packed a day bag, and headed in. When you’re walking into the museum, they have a walkway that represents how tall the “Sentinel” tree next to you is. It’s over 240 feet, so the walkway has every 40 feet marked to give you some perspective on how tall the tree is. We had our picture taken with the “Sentinel”, as well as the “Three Graces” and then headed into the museum. We read why these trees live so long, as well as other interesting facts regarding Giant Sequoias. Their wood has tannin, which repels insects and fungus, their bark has an inflammable resin, and is 2 feet thick, their branches are so high so that they can’t catch on fire (in most average fires), and they are very
good at healing themselves. You would think that such huge, straight, mostly branchless trees would be prime timber—but the wood is actually really brittle across the grain. They were harvested in the 1800’s for use in pencils! It took 2 men 13 days to saw down one of these!
Before we hit up the “Giant Forest”, we went to Moro Rock, a really amazing Granite dome within the park. It had 342 steps (Jenn counted) and was a vertical climb from the parking lot of over 300 feet. The drop from the peak was 4,000 vertical feet. Horrifying. Our legs were jell-o at the top…and at the bottom.
We got in the car to head for the “Giant Forest” and the WORLD’S LARGEST TREE (by volume). We stopped by the “Auto Log”, which was a fallen tree that actually had tire tracks in it from people driving their vehicles on it. Next, we stopped by a MASSIVE tree, that was actually FOUR Giant Sequoias grown together. Pictures can’t describe the enormity of this tree(s)—so we videotaped it.
At the Giant Forest we hiked straight to the General Sherman—the world’s largest tree. It was breathtaking. 103 feet in circumference, nearly the entire 275 feet to the top—over 2,100 years old. A standout thing worth mentioning regarding this part of the trip was the smell. Imagine pine, sequoia (which is kind of cinnamon/sweet/musk), and vanilla all mingling together in the thin and fresh mountain air. Awesome. We hiked to see all of the named trees (as well as the unnamed) and decided to take the “Congress Trail” to see groves of trees named “The Senate”, “The President”, and “The House”. This was a 3 mile hike away from everyone—there was nearly no one out here. We saw a Sequoia graveyard where several had fallen and broken down. We bathed our feet in a spring, and listened to everything—which was nothing.
The president was impressive, the senate was awesome, and the house was the biggest of all the groves. We were about 2 miles away from everything when we started to hear cracks and rustling in the not-so-distance. Out of the bush walked 3 grizzlies. They were standing upright wearing visors and sharing cocktails…JUST KIDDING. But there were strange noises that made us walk a little faster. We made it back to the bottom of the grove where shuttles pick up and drop off handicapped folks (and non-handicapped folks), so we caught that shuttle to our car. Once we were in the car, I realized how exhausted I was, and immediately fell asleep while Jenn drove us out. She woke me up at the Kings Canyon sign to see the view—but having the sequoias under my belt, I just slept right through it—nothing could top that.
I woke up when we finally got out of the park, and knew immediately what Jenn wanted to ask me—let’s stay in a hotel in Fresno. So, we booked it to Fresno, called a Super 8 off of North Parkway avenue, and booked a room. The management was awesome, and the room was cheap. We showered up, and ordered a Pizza Hut pizza. We left before dusk to pick it up, and it took us a while to find it (like we’re going to pay for delivery. Psh, please!). When we got back however…something had changed. A tall, skinny black woman was walking in front of the hotel with a black tube dress that…didn’t conceal her undies. A heavy white woman walked by with quite a bit hanging out. Another woman walked by—scantily clad and holding a man’s hand…seemingly leading him somewhere. Do I need to say it? These were janes turning tricks outside of the hotel. Hookers, women of the night, Roxannes. We grabbed our pizza, and the bear spray (this was scarier than the active bear area campsite for Jenn), bolted to the room, and…our key didn’t work. So, I made Jenn come with me to the office (I didn’t want her alone out here) and got our key fixed. We got into the room, locked everything, closed the curtains, kept the bear spray close, and ate our pizza while watching a National Geographic special on meth users…ahh, this is why we prefer nature. Fresno sucks. We really didn’t care for it at all. We were in several different parts of it, and none of them felt safe. So, we don’t plan on coming back.
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