Sequoia National Park

Last weekend we got away for a quick visit to the Sierra Nevada Mountains that rise out of central California to enjoy the fall colors.  Our first stop was Sequoia National Park - one of my favorite National Parks.  Early November is a great time to see this incredible place - come take a look at some of the spectacular scenes from this magical place.

Sequoia is our second oldest National Park.  It was created by the Congress on September 25, 1890 because residents of the San Joaquin Valley and conservationists feared that loggers would destroy the rare giant trees.

The park encompases so much more than the Sequiadendron giganteum, the scientific name for Sequoias.  The park ranges in elevation from 1,500 feet at the entrance to 14,494 on the top of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contigious United States.

The foothills are so lovely and many people enjoy camping here because the elevation is lower and the nights are warmer.

The bare tree in the foreground is the California Buckeye.  I liked the fruit of this tree:

The Whiteleaf Manzanita tree is another beauty that graces the foothills:

I was surprised to see the Yucca plant here, because I always associate Yucca with our deserts:

People used to enjoy driving through the Tunnel Rock.  Now cars are so much bigger, so the highway bypasses this attraction, but you can still imagine families traveling here in earlier times and taking the photo of their car inside the rock.

One problem we encountered was that road construction was going on and we needed to wait for a full hour while crews paved the road up to the Giant Forest.

The roads are a challenge to maintain in this popular National Park built on such rugged territory.  The flag man told me that the road construction had lasted for 14 months with daily hour-long closures.  The road is nearly finished now and we drove up the rest of the way on brand new pavement:

I snapped a photo of the new road from the car so you can see what an engineering feat it is to make a highway on this very steep mountain:

Moro Rock, a dome shaped granite monolith, is the most recognizable geological feature in the park.  These domes are common in the Sierra Nevada mountains and are formed by exfoliation of all of the softer rock.  The granite then expands and eventually forms the dome shape.  Yosemite has the very famous half-dome and El Capitan which are formed in the same process.  Usually when we come to Sequoia, we hike to the very top of the Moro Rock using a rock stairway built in the 1930s.  However, this time the road to Moro Rock was closed due to road construction.  

Finally at the Giant Forest!  The trip from San Bernardino to here is 300 miles and we lost the hour waiting for the road to reopen, so the time is already 3:30 and the sun is low in the sky.

The green stick is to measure the snow fall.  Average snow fall is about 10 feet a year at Giant Forest.

The Giant Forest Museum used to be a very busy lodge until 1999.  The Giant Forest was a village with a gas station, several lodges, cabins, restaurants, stores.  However, the Park Service became concerned that all of this traffic was damaging the Sequoias so all lodging has been built over in a different, less environmentally sensitive area of the park.

I have so many fond memories of meals eaten in this building when I first started coming to Sequoia back in the early 1990s.

Right next to the museum is the Sentinel Tree:

You can't really appreciate the size of these mammoth trees without a person standing next to it for perspective.

This boy was not supposed to climb on the Sentinel.  Signs all around the tree tell people to stay behind the railing in order to protect the shallow roots.  However, I couldn't resist snapping a few photos of him just to show the immense size of this tree.

By the way, the Sentinel tree is only "average" in size.  There are much larger Sequoias that we will visit on this trip.

Beetle rock is a nice place to explore.  You can see a nice vista of the San Joaquin Valley, that very fertile land that lies between the Coastal Mountain Range and the giant Sierra Nevada Mountains, from this point.  This couple was relaxing on Beetle rock.

Let's go visit the General Sherman, the largest living thing on earth!

This trail is new since I was last in the Park a few years ago and it was such a nice hike that it made the seven hour drive to reach it worth every minute.

This area of the forest is full of Giant Sequoias:

I like the ones that are scarred from their many many years on this earth.  The Giant Sequoias in this grove are between 1,500 years and 3,000 years old.

Fires, insects, and diseases do not kill these trees.  However, occasionally they topple over from root rot, high winds, or lighting strikes.  The root system is very shallow and these giant trees have no tap root.

Here I am standing next to a fallen Sequoia and you can see how the roots are very small in comparison to the giant tree.

It's hard to realize how very enormous these trees are while they are standing since all the trees around them are very large too.  When a Sequoia falls, you can really appreciate its size.

The hole you see in the left part of this tree is a tunnel to walk through standing straight up!

Now on to the main attraction: the General Sherman Tree - the largest living organism in the world.

This man and his baby are dwarfed by this monster of a tree.  The volume of the trunk is 52,500 cubic feet.  The tree stands 275 feet high and measures 109 feet around at the base.  The top of the tree is dead, so it will not grow any taller; however, each year the tree adds width - enough wood to equal another good sized tree.  The height of the very first large branch is 130 feet off the ground.

Sequoias are a difficult subject to photograph!

In January of 2006, a branch broke off the General Sherman and smashed the surrounding fence and made a large crater in the sidewalk.  The branch was bigger than most full grown trees - 6 feet in diameter and 30 feet in length!  Luckily no one was standing there when the branch fell.

I could stay in this enchanted forest forever, but the sun is starting to get really low in the sky and we need to pass through Kings Canyon National Park to get to Fresno by night fall:

This bridge to Kings Canyon is so picturesque and I found some mule deer getting some dinner here:

Mule deer are the mainstay of the mountain lion's diet.  Mountain lions are very elusive and rarely seen, but they do live in this park so it's important to keep that in mind when hiking alone.

Driving this highway is so peaceful and the scenery is incredible.  This area is the second largest roadless landscape in the contigious United States.

Soon we will be in Kings Canyon National Park and I will show you the upper portion of the Park which contains the Grant Grove.

Thank you so much for coming along with me on this fall road trip!