Sequoia National Park

7/22/2011 Friday

This morning when we woke up and headed up to see the General Sherman Sequoia tree, it marked our first week of travel. Sitting here at night in the Potwisha USFS campground, and typing out the update for today. There are a lot of families that camp out and I think the kids have the most fun considering they appear to be laughing most of the time. Some adults are hanging out fixing supper. The Hispanic family across from us was playing Mexican Bingo last night. Brought back memories of when I used to do the same, except not at a campground.


There’s a roaring river that runs through the campground and at our distance, it’s just a constant white noise. Went down to the river and took some pics and video. Met some kids coming up from the river and talked to them a bit. They said it was cold, but it got warmer the longer you were in it. Not sure exactly where they were getting in because there didn’t appear to be a safe place anywhere. The river is working like a Maytag washing machine. A sign by the river says someone drowns in this river every year.

We left Pancho at the campground for one more day because we weren’t allowed to take him with us. Vehicles were restricted to an overall length of 22’. The roads are really windy and I can see how long vehicles would make it dangerous for everyone. Our plan was to camp at one of the other campgrounds higher up. We were looking for a campground that had cooler night temps. We gathered up our gear and took off. We bought our tickets for the Crystal Cave tour then drove over to the cave.  It was at a lower elevation than the forest, so the mosquitos were pretty bad.  It was not a very big cave, but still neat and the temp was a cool 50 degrees.

General Sherman is quite a spectacle. I wish cameras did a better job of capturing its size. Our sight is some much better than a camera for things like this. I learned that when the Sequoia gets old, the top of the tree quits growing so it doesn’t get any taller. At that point the trunk starts getting thicker. The thicker the tree the older it is.

The largest tree has a trunk 30’ across. After they get so big, you can’t really tell which one is bigger unless they were next to each other. The Grant tree looks as big as the Sherman tree.

THE SHERMAN TREE

K

GRANT TREE: Keith is standing about 50' in front of the tree so he would look even smaller if he was right next to it.

After checking out the trees we went to find a campsite at the upper campgrounds. There was not one site available anywhere. On the way back to the Potwisha campground we took a wrong turn and lost some travel time but saw more of the Kings Canyon National Park. We finally got back to camp by dark and ate some venison sausage, took showers, etc.  Oh yea, and we saw this bear along the way to the Crystal Cave tour.

BEAR

Tomorrow we head for the Redwood National Forest to see the Redwoods. I originally planned to go to Yosemite but it being a Saturday tomorrow, I figured the park would be really packed. Will update with more pictures soon.