🙂 Incredible to see these old trees!
🙁 Bit chilly but added to the experience!
We disembarked our Amtrak train and took a bus to Sacramento. I had to drive as Paul was too young to hire a car – under 25! LOL. Found an excellent campsite and cooked and slept! -4C!
Up early – SO much snow! We took the General Grant trail and stopped off for an all American breakfast of pancakes and syrup and bottomless cups of coffee! Dove to bottom of Kings Canyon – great views!
We then hiked and did the loop around General Sherman. HUGE! Sequoias are some of the largest and oldest trees in the world. These massive trees can live for over 3,000 years thanks to a chemical in their bark called tannin, which helps to protect against rot, boring insects and even fire. The most famous resident of Sequoia National Park — the General Sherman Tree — stretches almost 84m tall and over 11m in diameter, making it the largest tree in the world by volume… At another stop we drove our car through a log!! e walked through a hollow stump and climbed Moro rock which was unfortunately shrouded in mist.
Stayed at an amazing campsite called Stony Creek which was run by a friendly old couple. Enjoyed a camp fire and Trent made friends with ‘Shane’, an all American kid! lol.
Fire and proactive forest management play a unique role in the parks. Heat from low-intensity fires allows sequoia cones to open and drop their seeds in the fresh ash bed — seeds the size of an oatmeal flake! Sequoia and Kings Canyon were the first national parks west of the Mississippi to use prescribed burning as way to not only protect, but to ensure the long-term survival and rejuvenation of giant sequoias.
A great stay with incredible nature! We took a Greyhound bus to LA and met a really nice South African guy called Justin … years later we would be in Jhb at a shopping mall with friends and he spotted us walking past and yelled our names and said hi! 🙂
Go to: United States of America
