Sequoia National Park

Five minutes before the alarm went off at 3:00 AM, I sat up in bed and turned on the light. Like well-oiled machines, Kathy and I threw on our clothes and toted clothes, bags, coolers and walking sticks out to our Subaru. After one last look around, upstairs and downstairs, we were on the road at 4:30 AM.

Two and a half hours later, we pulled into Cracker Barrel, just off Highway 99 in Bakersfield, for our traditional road-trip inaugural breakfast.

In keeping with tradition, I had the hash brown skillet, topped with scrambled eggs, red peppers, green chiles and fried onions, augmented with biscuits and sausage gravy. As you can see from the picture, Kathy chose to flaunt tradition, and went with scrambled egg whites, tomatoes, turkey sausage and fruit. I probably need to move into the future with Kathy. Tomorrow.

An hour and a half east of Bakersfield lies the southern entrance to Sequoia National Park, the second National Park in the country, added in 1890. There were only three or four cars lined up at the entrance to the park, and no-one at all in the right lane, so we showed our Senior Citizen Lifetime National Parks pass to the ranger, picked up a map, and started down Generals Highway. 

The highway is so named because it connects the General Sherman tree in the southern part of Sequoia National Park with the General Grant tree in neighboring Kings Canyon National Park, where we’ll spend two nights at the John Muir Lodge. Sherman and Grant are the two largest trees in the world by volume. 

In both parks you’ll also find a Robert E. Lee tree, but you’ll need an older guidebook, since the Park Service no longer maintains the signage, or puts them on maps. In a similar vein, the Sequoia National Park entrance sign features the Plains Indian portrait which originally appeared on the back of the buffalo-head nickel, and that has proved controversial.

It’s been a beautiful day, and the driving has been exhilarating. Just smelling the air, we could tell that we weren’t in the city any more. The park speed limit is 25 miles per hour, and, it often felt like we were the only ones on the road. When we entered the park, the temperature was about 82 degrees (at 10 in the morning). As we gained elevation, it dropped to mid 60s, so we drove with all of windows open, and the air-conditioning off. Quite a relief from the heat and humidity of the last month in Southern California.

At the Giant Forest Museum, we saw the 2,200-year-old Sentinel Sequoia. It is 257 feet tall with a 25-foot diameter at its base. The 37th largest Sequoia in the world, it is just average size as Sequoias go.

From the museum we started walked along the Big Trees Trail loop, a paved trail through a portion of the Giant Forest. There were more people here than on our drive up, but it certainly wasn’t very crowded.

I’ve been going to the gym and walking a couple of miles on the treadmill several times each week to prepare for this trip, so I was pleased to find that I wasn’t too tired. When we got back to the car, we drove a few miles north to see the General Sherman tree. On the way, traffic stopped for a small black bear who was tearing the bark off a fallen tree, probably to get at the grubs underneath. We were lucky to get a parking space in the first row near the trailhead. Taking our walking sticks, we started climbing down the trail, which featured this sign.

The trail was fairly crowded, and we heard a lot of different languages. Mothers were carrying their children, and there were a few older folks with walkers. When we reached the tree, there was a line of people waiting for just the right photo. Instead of getting in line, we started to take a selfie from a different angle, when one of the people in line offered to take our picture.

After our last hike, I thought that this one would be a piece of cake. It wasn’t. We took it slow climbing back up, stopping for a rest at every bench. We got back to the car around 2:00 PM and were hungry, so we stopped at Wuksachi Lodge at Lodgepole and ordered a pesto and chicken pizza, along with a meatball sub for lunch. The food was surprisingly good and more than we could eat.

This is the first time we’ve stayed inside one of the National Parks. We got to the John Muir Lodge in Grants Grove Village at a 3:45 PM, and waited 15 minutes for our room to be ready. I had heard that some people were disappointed at the in-park lodging, but our room was really nice.

In my imagination, I had pictured sitting out on the porch, watching the sun go down. In reality, both of us were really beat. I worked on the blog for a bit, both of us read for a while, and by 8:00 PM we were asleep.