More trees. I promise I won't bore you with tons of photos of the (seemingly) same tree, or inundate you with a bunch of statistics. Short and sweet. Let's begin with Sequoia NP.
The aptly-named Sequoiadendron Giganteum are the largest organisms on the planet, by mass. This is the biggest of all, General Sherman, weighing close to 2 tons.
Yep, it's a whopper. At 2,200 yrs old, General Sherman is the largest living thing on Earth.
This is the Fallen Monarch, a fire-hollowed trunk. It has been used as a cabin, hotel, saloon and stables for US Cavalry horses.
Lots of things to see here, apart from sequoias... Been living in the Canadian Rockies for 11 years and on this one day of hiking, I saw more bears (6) than in all my time living in Canmore.
Walked up Moro Rock - 400 stairs leading to a beautiful 360-degree view of nearby Kings Canyon.
The Mark Twain Stump, about a quarter of which is pictured here. It took two men 13 days of sawing and hacking to cut it down. Unfathomably, wood from these trees was used for making all kinds of things, from pencils for schoolchildren to grapevine stakes for Napa Valley vineyards.
They used to hold community dances on this platform. You know, back when hacking huge trees was a jolly good thing... Times sure have changed.
Try as I might, there was no way to get the entirety of this stump within the scope of my lens without my being suspended from a crane.
Panoramic Point. Had lunch here overlooking this valley.
Felled trees weren't just good for dancing on; people lived inside them as well. There are several fine examples of these 'tree houses' in the park, none better than Tharp's Log.
Complete with table, shelving, a window that swings open/shut and a stone fireplace. This served as ranger Hale Thorp's summer home for 29 years.
I found another monster. The oldest Sequoia ever found was 3,500 yrs old, which is fascinating to me - trees this old were around in the Iron Age, when men started learning how to use iron in their tools.
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KINGS CANYON
This park was more impressive to me than its neighbor, Sequoia. Technically, it's the deepest canyon in North America ---as opposed to the Grand Canyon which is, well, grand.
Zumwalt Meadows, my favorite walk in Kings Canyon.
It's hard to describe how sublime it was to take a drive through this canyon. Some people enjoy the views from mountain tops, but I prefer feeling dwarfed by such massive cliffs rising up all around me.
The deepest parts of Kings Canyon cut a depth of 2,500 meters through its walls. Plainly said, this means that the canyon walls on either side of you rise over 2.5 kms above your head. Talk about feeling like an ant. It was frustratingly impossible to capture that kind of immensity with my tiny little camera.
All in all, 5 days/4 nights at the campground in Sequoia/Kings Canyon meant lots of nature walking, bear-dodging, chatting with my redneck neighbors at the campground (man, are there a lot of rednecks here!), cliff-side lunches enjoyed with a good book (A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson), and no shower for 5 days. Not even a water fountain to clean my feet. Good Lord. Let me tell you, baby wipes can only do so much! I am itching to arrive at my hostel in Yosemite, not only for the park's world-famous vistas but for the promise of a shower and a serious scrub-down.
Hope everyone smells better back home! Congrats to all my teacher friends who have wrapped up another school year and are enjoying a well-deserved summer break.
Love you all, xx
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