Fernanda & Karl - Road Trip, Day 18 -- Website by Now Interactive Solutions

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Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Road Trip, Day 18

Inside the fallen sequoia
(Click to view)

Sequoia, Kings Canyon National Parks

More fun with payphones this morning. We decided to buy a phone card, only to discover they charge a $1.50 surcharge for using it at a payphone -- a 15% surcharge over the value of the card, each and every time! Bloody robber barons! So we went back to the motel and used the phone at the front desk. No luck with finding my keys at the Grand Canyon...

So after driving in circles a few more times, off we were to Sequoia National Park! On the drive up, everything was dry and yellow. Even within the park, driving up the mountains, there was no sign that this land would support the giant sequoias I was hoping to see -- I even began to have my doubts I was at the right place. When I was a kid, we went to see giant redwoods, which are further north along the coast. Maybe I was completely mistaken about what was in this park!

They were doing construction on the road, and so we were stopped for nearly 40 minutes, before being allowed to proceed over dirt road switchbacks. And then we turned a corner, and suddenly, bam! deep, wet forest, and yes: giant trees! There is no lead up, no indication of what is coming, you are just suddenly there. The trees are so big it's practically impossible to photograph them without a wide-angle lens. I kept trying though. The photos just don't do justice: you can't see the depth of field showing how BIG these things are.

We had a picnic lunch, and continued through the park. We hiked down to see the biggest living thing, the 'General Sherman' tree. It isn't the tallest, just the most voluminous. We drove through, out of Sequoia National Park and into Kings Canyon National Park. The two parks are linked, same entry fee covers both, and in fact Kings Canyon has a copse of sequoias that is actually more impressive than what we saw in Sequoia.

Anyway, a full day, and then we drove to our lodging just outside Yosemite. Now, I've been having a problem since we got to California, which is this: the map, which is printed on the same size piece of paper as all the other states, must obviously use a smaller scale to get all of California on it, a much larger state than even the other big western states. So the distances are actually much larger on this map than they have been on the other maps, and this keeps fooling me. I look at the map, think, "easy", and in fact it's this huge distance. So it was quite a bit of driving today, both over scenic routes and ugly sprawley freeway through Fresno.

The landscape keeps being something new and interesting. We had rolling hills at the end of the journey today that looked sort of like eastern farm country, except for the occasional odd touches like palm trees or interesting rock formations. We stopped for dinner before reaching our lodging, and had a good meal. We got to our camp after dark. We're going with tent cabins again, for two nights. The place seems OK so far, very hostel like with younger people from all over. Free wifi in the cafe, which is where I am now. Maybe I'll finally be able to get the captions to the pictures updated.

Tomorrow: Yosemite!

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Previous Entries

Welcome
06/16/26

:-(
06/19/21

Açores
08/29/18

Our New Bathroom Saga
11/17/16

Europe 2015
03/16/15

The Berkshires
10/18/14

Road Trip South
03/23/13

Greece!
07/26/12

Our Trip to Ireland
08/09/09