Out West Adventure: Part 2--Sequoia National Park

Fri. May 24: Sequoia National Park put on quite a display for us today. She was arrayed in wild flowers of every color. But the showiest were the whites: datura, dogwood, buckeye, and 6-10 foot tall “Our Lord’s Candle” Yucca. She was crowned with the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and above it all was a brilliant blue sky. And her trees; those magnificent trees!! We learned that Sequoias are a type of Redwood, but they differ from the Pacific coastal Redwoods in several ways. Mature Sequoias have trunks that barely taper as they grow so their girth goes up to their crowns, giving them great stability and the ability to live a long time without falling. Therefore, they are the largest by volume in the world, but not the tallest, which are the Coastal Redwoods. We arrived at the Entrance to the park at 9:00 and drove up, up, up Generals Highway. We briefly toured the Foothills Visitors Center and got our passport stamp there. We had to carefully time our departure from there to arrive at a construction zone at the hour or half hour in order to be allowed to pass through one-way as they improve the road. Mileage dropped to 8.0mpg as we rose from about 1000 feet to over 6000 feet with switchbacks and breathtaking lookouts up the valley of the Kaweah River. The temperature dropped into the mid-fifties and never got above the low sixties all day. At the Grant Forest Museum we parked the truck and for the rest of the day relied on the free shuttles throughout the park. This is how our day went:

• Toured the Grant Forest Museum and got another passport stamp for there.
• Took a shuttle from the Museum to the second General Sherman tree shuttle stop. We inadvertently made a great choice in that. We were at the top of the very steep .3 mile trail down to see the largest tree in the world—General Sherman. Because the top is dead the tree isn't the tallest but its girth continues to grow so it is the largest by volume. And it is huge! From the General Sherman we took the 2 mile Congress Trail to see several large stands of Sequoias named after Presidents, The House, The Senate, etc.  Along the way a pileated woodpecker landed at eye level in a tree about 5 yards away. It hopped a bit higher and then flew to a tree right in front of us and hopped its way up into the branches. Although there were some uphill stretches the trail ended down at the first General Sherman tree shuttle stop, where most people get off to hike UP to the tree. We caught the shuttle and took it on to
• Lodgepole Visitors Center, where we got our third passport stamp and looked around a little bit, knowing we would be coming back.
• Took a different shuttle up to Wuksachi Lodge. At 7000+ feet, this is the end point for the shuttles until the even higher Dorst Creek Campground opens in July. We ate a lovely lunch at the lodge looking out over the hillside of pine trees.
• Rode the shuttle back down to Lodgepole, where we took the time to watch the video about bears at Sequoia.
• Caught a shuttle down to the Museum where we could catch a smaller shuttle past Tunnel Tree (a fallen Sequoia through which cars can drive) to Moro Rock, a granite dome. Here one can climb 400 steps for a panoramic, 360° view of the Sierra Nevadas. We went a little more than halfway before heading back to catch the shuttle to go out to Crescent Meadow. The driver on our way out told us that the last shuttle would be at 5:30. That gave us about half an hour to take the trail around the quiet, peaceful wetland that has been there since John Muir’s time and earlier. As we walked a young mule buck with tiny antler buds walked up the trail towards us, seemingly unperturbed by our using his path. As he came very close he stepped off the trail and up the bank to give us a little more room. We continued on our way but the path became less well marked and we ended up hurrying the last half a mile for fear we would miss that “last shuttle”. We made it easily and then found out that there would be 2 or 3 more.

After spending a few minutes in the Museum we were happy to return to the truck to begin coasting out of Sequoia National Park. We got 62mpg going down (average for the day about 17mpg) and were happy to find that the construction had ended at noon for the Memorial Day Weekend so we didn’t have worry about timing our descent. It was 6:45 when we went back through the Entrance Gate, nearly ten hours after we had arrived. The campground had filled in considerably and was full of families and large, noisy groups but all was quiet by about 10:00. It had been a wonderful, but tiring, day and we had a simple soup supper and waited for the full moon to rise before we gratefully went to bed. 

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