I sat with Clara while Justin and Sonya sat on their own. Sonya was very proud that she was a big girl and could sit all by herself.
Here's a photo of the propellor and the landscape of California below.
The division of the land was so geometrical that it looked rather surreal to me.
After picking up our rental car from the airport, we drove straight to Sequoia National Park.
It was a 2 hour drive and along the way, we had to stop because a tow truck was trying to get a car , which had driven off the road and down the slope, back up.
I don't think anyone got hurt and the car didn't look very smashed up. In fact, the police could actually drive it to the side after the tow truck got it back on the road.
When we reached the entrance to the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park, the sign on the side of the road directed us to some side roads on the left to pay for the entrance fee. While queueing for our turn, we wondered why they set up the entrance fee station to the side of the road. Cars could actually ignore the sign and just drive right into the park. When it was finally our turn, we asked for the Inter-Agency Pass that would allow us to access multiple parks since we would be visiting quite a few places on the trip. They were out of the pass and told us that we could purchase one from the visitor station just down the road. We drove on but never found the visitor station and didn't pay any entrance fee.
We drove on the Generals Highway and were soon greeted by tall trees. We thought that the trees there were pretty big but had no idea how big they can actually get.
We parked the car and went on the Big Trees Trail to see General Sherman Tree, the biggest tree in the world. We still had no idea how big it is :)
Tall trees...
Fallen big tall trees...
Very tall trees...
Interesting grains of a fallen big tall tree...
Huge pine cones!
Finally, the biggest tree in the world! It is the biggest by volume but not by height. It is 275 feet (83.8 metres) tall and the trunk at the base has a diameter of 36.5 feet (11.1 meters) ! If you try to look closely, you can see tiny people at the base of the tree.
We were actually still quite a distance from the tree itself and along the way, encountered other big trees.
There were two huge trees that were quite close next to each other and here we were hiding in a hollow area of trunk of the tree on the right.
Here, Sonya and Clara posed in front of a fallen big tree. Look at the size of the cross-section of the tree!
Some of the trees had moss growing on their bark. Sonya called them hairy trees :)
Here's the General Sherman Tree. Look at the size of its trunk!
I forgot to mention earlier that it is estimated to be between 2300 - 2700 years old! It made the 千年老妖 in chinese movies seemed so young! hehehe...
After General Sherman, it was time to get back into the car to explore other parts of the park. It was quite a climb up to where we parked the car. Sonya was already grumbling on our way down and so Justin offered to climb up to get the car while we waited at the pick-up point near the General Sherman Tree. We walked through another fallen big tree on our way to the pick-up point.
We drove on and soon came to the Auto Log, another fallen tree.
We went onto the fallen tree and walked on its trunk.
See how tiny Justin, Sonya and Clara were at the base of the tree. Look at its roots!
Next stop was the Tunnel Log. It was another big tree that had fallen across the road. Part of it had been hollow and cars could drive through.
Justin dropped me off in front of the tree so that I could take photos of him driving through the tree :)
Another must see places in the park that I had read about was Moro Rock, a great big granite dome. A 400-step climb to the top of the rock promised spectacular panoramic vistas of both Sequoia and Kings Canyon.
We decided to give it a try and started climbing the steps. Justin had Clara in the sling and Sonya held my hand.
It was tiring and we stopped to rest. Actually, it was also quite scary because we were so high up in the mountain.
We finally reached the top. We were very proud of Sonya who climbed all the way up all by herself. She claimed that she still had energy even after we reached the top :) This is the girl who also climbed the Bunker Hill Monument all by herself.
Clara was really fussy by then, either because she was scared or tired. She wanted me to carry her and was trying to struggle her way out of the sling. We transferred her from Justin to myself at the top of Moro Rock to get her to calm down.
The views were spectacular and all 400 steps were well worth it.
The path that took us up and down the rock was really narrow. While waiting for people to take photos along the way, we also got someone to take a photo for us.
By the time we got back to our car and continued along Generals Highway, the sun was already setting behind the mountains.
We are not 100% sure but we suspect that that is Moro Rock in the photo below.
We were pleasantly surprised to see 2 elks on our way out of the park :) Our first wildlife sighting on the trip :)
