2012/05 Western USA trip - Sequoia |
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Sunday June 3rd
In the morning, we were pleased to find that all the cold showers were now locked up, making it easier to pick a hot one. This was our last day in Kings Canyon, though we weren’t moving far, just next door to the Sequoia park. Our plan was to get there quickly but we kept stopping to look at flowers or views. The road into Sequoia is called the Generals Highway as it connects the two largest trees in the world, the General Sherman and the General Grant.
We soon found that the campground I’d chosen wouldn’t open for a couple of weeks, and we ended up at Lodgepole, further into the park. There was no one at the gate so we assumed the campground’s system was the usual self-registration. The campground had no obvious one-way system, but we found our way to the perfect site, the only problem being that we were nose-in. It took about ten backs and fros between trees and rocks and under branches to turn the rig around. Feeling satisfied with our work, we uncoupled the trailer and looked for the self-registration board, only to find that it had been disabled.
So we ended up going back to the entrance, where the ranger had now appeared. He gave us the bad news that the entire campground had been reserved and we would have to move to another. We had to hook the trailer up again and move it half a mile to another site, not difficult but a waste of a beautiful afternoon.
After all that we only had time left for one visit, so we went to see the General Sherman tree, biggest in the world by sheer size. It isn’t much taller than 
the surrounding trees as the giant redwoods seem to stop growing upwards at about 275 feet and then just put on bulk. In a nice touch, the trail to the tree begins at about the same elevation as the top of the tree and there are markers on the slopes to tell you how far down the tree you’ve come. Of course you tend to take more interest in these as you are plodding back up!
As usual, I took umpteen pictures of the giant trees, but I think this one, showing the tree’s “toes” gives an idea of how gigantic these redwoods really are.
On our way back we traveled through a National Forest area and loaded up with firewood logs legally (you can’t do this in a park), but when we tried to cut them to size back at the campsite, we found that they were very hard and difficult to saw. We were camping at about 7000 feet and it cooled down fast that evening, 
so the fire was very welcome. We found that bags of chips/crisps bought at low altitudes would blow up like puffer fish and sometimes explode when up in the high country.
We’d seen so many new and beautiful flowers in Kings Canyon and Sequoia, that I squeezed some into a single picture