Death Valley and Sequoia National Parks

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C: So we left the bright lights and headed off to California. We wanted to go to Death Valley but I think we underestimated the distances a bit as we ended up driving nearly 500 miles in one day and doing DV the speed tourism way. It was very impressive, however, a massive basin of salt between mountains that looked like solid sand dunes. We were below sea level at one point And it was the hottest place we'd been to though still nowhere near the temperatures they get in summer. Unfortunately it was dark by the time we left so didn't see much of the scenic road out and got to our overnight stop, a seemingly very dull industrial city called Bakersfield very late. Thank God for 24hr Denny's and a really scruffy motel!

The next day we decided to set ourselves up for the journey with a breakfast visit to IHOP, you can pretty much get anything you want with pancakes. I couldn't believe the amount some people were managing to eat. Huge hot breakfasts with stacks of pancakes on the side! We then headed off into the mountains to visit Sequoia National Park and it was absolutely stunning. Enormous redwoods blanketing the steep sided mountains surrounded us as we drove through the valley and up into the forest. It was a beautiful day too which really helped accentuate the colour of the trees. The sequoias here are the tallest trees in the world and some are around 2000 years old. The centrepiece is General Sherman which towered over us at 84 metres tall. It was difficult to get it into one photo! Unfortunately due to snow some of the smaller roads were closed so we couldn't get to the drive-thru sequoia (exactly as it sounds) but we did get to walk through the trunk of a fallen one. The views down the valley were beautiful too and we were treated to another lovely sunset as we left the park.

We headed down to the next unexciting Californian town of Fresno to contemplate the next stage.

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Photos

General Sherman
The worlds largest tree (by volume)

Comments

[alex]

does this comment appear?? Isn't fresno the crystal meth capital of california?

[cateandrog]

Yes, it did
What did you do different?

[alex]

i wrote the comment in the right box! had been putting them in the comment title box which doesn't work. I hadn't even noticed there was a comment title box. Just put or xmas decs up - sure I will enjoy taking them down when we get back from mexico on january 11th!