Sequoia National Forest

Mom and Tommy --- Guess Where? - This is my favorite sign from the trip thus far!

I will start by saying we saw Barth Vader EVERYWHERE and I didn't bother to get a pic. :)

We left San Mateo around 9 and got to the Southern Entrance to Sequoia National Park by 3.  That's a whole lot of driving.  The route up to the biggest tree, General Sherman, was painful for both Tommy and myself.  It was up and down and curve after curve.  I was driving and felt car sick so I can only imagine what he went through!  It didn't seem to affect Mom though, that lucky duck!   At any rate the scenery was amazing!   I definitely am going to come back and spend some time here.


We only made it to the General Sherman tree.  In my wisdom I had made us reservations for

Me at General Sherman tree.  It is talllll!

Tommy at General Sherman tree!

Ridgecrest, California.  It's located on the east side of the park.  Unbeknownset to me, you can only go north south or south north in sequoia!  There are no roads going east west that are open to the public.  At least they weren't when we were there.  Needless to say we never made it to Ridgecrest and instead bunked down in Bakersfield but still only spent a couple of hours looking around Sequoia!

Me fitting into a space in a living Sequoia! 

Cross section of a fallen Sequoia

We had several photo opportunites at the General Sherman tree walk.  They had a tree that you could stand in! They also had a cross section of a tree.  Judging by the rings experts estimate that the tree was over a thousand years old.  During that time scarring revealed that over 80 forest fires had affected this tree.  It was HUGE!

Tommy and I inside a fallen Sequoia

I wanted to drive through the tunnel tree but due to how busy it was they had the road blocked and a shuttle running.  When we were leaving you could drive through it though so I guess the trick is to get there earlier or later than the rest of the traffic:) We did get to walk through a Sequoia though!  We did get to walk under tunnel rock which was kind of cool.  You could see where the road used to be and where the scratches on the rock were from campers that were too large.  I am guessing that's when they decieded to make it a walk through attraction.. 

The Fam at the rock tunnel!

We didn't really get to see much wildlife but then again we didn't go too far into the park.  The area we were in was very heavily populated. 

There is a walking trail that goes around to a sequoia that was made into a home in the 1800s .  I was really looking forward to walking it but we ran out of time:(  I was not wanting to drive the hairpins in the dark or even in the dusk!  I've decided I'll come back and do the whole park hiking sometime!