Sequoia National Park - 2nd Day Drive

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.

Snow was falling constantly from the branches above. Joe said he saw a car with a cracked windshield heading back down the mountain. We wondered if falling snow had caused it. We had some snow fall and hit our car pretty hard.

 

We had not seen snow for almost 3 years now, so this was fun.

Joe showing how deep the snow was at the top. General Sherman Tree parking lot was full. We parked down the road and walked up to the parking lot. We wondered what it would be like for parking in the summer, if it was this full during off season.

Looking up to the top of the General Sherman Tree, the worlds largest tree. There are other trees that are taller or wider, but in volume and mass, the General Sherman sequoia tree is the largest in the world!

 

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.

A sign at the overlook tells how this vista is getting ruined, as well as the plant life in the park from warm polluted circulating air from Fresno to Visalia.  ( Visalia is the town next to Tulare we stayed at before we came to Three Rivers, CA.)



We reach cloud level.

 

Moro Rock as we descend.

 

 

Back at the road construction, we see a guy out of his car pointing and saying, "There's a bear". As we got closer I popped out of the window to get above the wall. The bear looked up once, but I missed the picture, because I was trying to take the picture and also point where the bear was to Joe. It's all Joe's fault, like always!

I think you can see the red from the Red Bud trees well in this picture.

 

I had Joe stop so I could get a flower picture and drive Joe crazy.

 

 

 

The white flowers smell heavenly!

 

 

As we turned onto the road that goes to our resort, we saw this Acorn Woodpecker. We have seen a lot of them, but I had not been able to get a picture of them. I think it is a male, because the females have shorter bills. ( Don't I sound like a birder)!

 

Further down the road, we saw this pair of California Quail. The male of course has the black face and feather.

 

At home, we took Mallery for a walk down by the river. We heard lots of birds in the trees.

 

I saw some birds flying, so I started to take a picture as Joe jeered, I couldn't get a picture of a flying bird! I proved him wrong didn't I!

 

I think this is some kind of warbler. I am hoping when we get our zoom lens for our new Canon camera, I will be able to get better pictures of birds.

 

Kaweah River at Kaweah Park Resort.