Monday 4/16/2012
Our 2nd day drive into Sequoia National Park was perfect. This is a view as we left Three Rivers, CA. |
The fog was gone, the sun was shining and the temperatures were in the 70's. |
Here we were pulling up to the Sequoia National Park pay station. You could actually see the mountain behind the station, compared to the day before. |
On this day we were able to drive much farther into the park, but we still could not drive all the way to Kings Canyon. |
The visitor center is only a few miles in, from the entrance of the park. |
We drove on and didn't stop at the visitor center, because we had stopped the day before. |
We drove past Tunnel Rock and saw that people had climbed on top of it. |
Moro Rock out in the distance. There is a trail to it, that is open in the summer, or you can use snowshoes or ski's to get to it in the winter. |
At 4000 feet we hit snow and the road construction. We were blessed and only had to wait for about 5 minutes. |
A traffic light controls the one way traffic. The wait is 20 minutes on the weekends, and and hour during the week. |
Only room for one lane of traffic in construction area. |
Oh no, someone didn't wait for the green light. I don't know what is going to happen when they get to that one lane area! |
Views out the window on the construction road. |
We enter into the Giant Forest. Sequoia trees are only found on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Range, between 5000 to 7000 feet. |
The Giant Forest is really something you have to see. Here again, the pictures just don't show the true size of the sequoia trees. |
We drove that day as far as Wuksachi to where the road is closed to Kings Canyon. |
The farther up we went, the deeper the snow got. |
We had not seen snow for almost 3 years now, so this was fun. |
General Sherman is a giant sequoia tree that stands 275 feet tall. |
The tree's trunk weights an estimate of 1,385 tons. |
The circumference at the ground is nearly 103 feet. |
We had to tramp in deep snow amongst many foot tracks, and it was very slippery because of the thawing. |
I had wished I had brought my hiking poles to keep from slipping and falling. We also were being slammed from snow sliding off above branches. |
This is a sequoia that was cut down years ago. |
On the way back to the car I found another spot that showed the deep snow on a hill. |
Next we drove down the road to Wolverton picnic area. We pulled into the parking lot and had lunch and watched the children play in the snow. |
After lunch we drove to the Lodgepole Visitor Center. |
Even though there was a lot of snow, the sun was out and it felt warm enough to not wear a jacket by then. |
After watching a few short movies, we went back to the car. Mallery was panting, because she was getting warm also. |
Our last stop before we turned around was the Wuksachi Village. There was a lodge there, but we didn't stop to check it out because fog was coming in and we thought it might rain. |
This was the end of the road, and only cars with chains could go further down the road to Kings Canyon. |
At the Wuksachi Village we were at 7000 ft. |
A lot of the trees were covered in moss in the Giant Forest. |
The sequoia trees seems to be immortal. It is disease, fungi, and fire resistant. Most sequoia die from toppling from shallow root system. |
The road goes through two giant sequoia trees. |
This picture shows the size difference of other trees around this one. |
Beautiful views going down. |
Views from Eleven Range Overlook. |
We reach cloud level. |
Beautiful pictures Mom! I would love to go there one day.
ReplyDeleteThank you Tiffany, Some day when Lennox gets older you three or all of us can do some family RV traveling out west!
DeleteWe are going fulltime in our 5th wheel June 1. I'm enjoying reading your blog. Just curious about going between parks. You said only with chains. How about with a 4x4 with M+S tires?
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Brian
Hi, Huntram, By the time you get there, you will not have problems with snow. If for some reason there was snow, the CA. law requires you have chains with you, even with a 4x4. When we wer at the visitor center, my hushand over heard a man ask if he would be ok with his 4x4, and the ranger told him, he would probably be fine, but the CA law requires you have chains with you. We think that if you go in without chains and get stuck, maybe it protects the park from having to pull you out.
ReplyDeleteOh also congrats on your new life full timing coming up. You will love it!
DeleteLovely pics all you uploaded here Thanks. I have a travel site that can help anything with look at kings canyon national park accommodation
ReplyDelete