Sequoia National Park

General Sherman Tree - The largest tree in the world. Marsha is standing a good 100 feet in front of the tree.



General Sherman Tree Again. Marsha is standing to the right of the picture and this picture was taken a good 200 feet from the base of the tree.



Picture provides some perspective on the size of the trees.



This was a "small to medium" sized tree that got toppled and the cut a walk way through it.




Date: Sunday, June 13th
Day: 30
RV Miles: 3,315
Location: Visalia, CA
Elevation: 378 ft

Sasha and I didn’t get to see the big trees in Sequoia National Park. Larry and Marsha parked us at a kennel again. Bummer! From the pictures they brought back, it looks like there were some real awesome trees there. I could have spent hours sniffing just one of ‘em.

If you remember, Larry said at Bryce, everything was down. At Zion, everything was up. At Sequoia he is saying everything is enormous and up. Made him feel like a midget. Again he was worried that none of this would come through on the pictures. He said his mind played tricks on him due to the scale of things that make you lose your depth perception. It seems the trees look huge but not that huge until you realize you are standing twice as far away from the tree that you think you are.

For example, the General Sherman Tree is over 40 feet wide at the base. It looks big, in the first picture above, but Marsha is standing about 100 feet in front of it. In the second one, the picture was taken a good 200 feet from the base of the tree. These brutes are huge!

The road into the parks was a bear. In the last 17 miles the elevation rose from 800 feet to 6,900 feet with 8 to 10% grade switchbacks and the temperature dropped from 93 to 76 degrees. That last 17 miles took an hour to drive and the campground was an hour from there. As a rule, there were no guardrails on the road and in several places, all you could see off the edge of the road was sky. Marsha, the trooper she is drove up, however she did make Larry drive down.

Larry was a bit upset about the park management. Seems the quality of the information provided at each National Park varies widely. At Zion, for instance, the park guides were well organized and provided all of the information you would need at a glance. At Sequoia, the guides were almost useless and provided very little useful information.

Tomorrow (Monday) is going to be a do-nothing day and then we are headed North for our next three-day stop. It is very likely that we will not have any phone or internet service during that period so I may be Saturday before we are back in range.