It was as clear a morning as we've seen since Minnesota so I stopped a few places and got a few shots of the area as we climbed the mountain into the park.
Lots of greenery here unlike up in Yosemite where it all seemed dry and colorless...which it was for the most part.
These were real nice views this morning.
Up on the ridge, we entered the national park.
I used my senior pass again. The last year it was $10 for a senior lifetime pass was the year I became eligible. We have really gotten our monies worth out of that $10. This is the 11th national park we've entered since getting that pass.
The highway through the park is a twisting ride in the woods.
There aren't many sequoias until you get near the General Sherman site which is about an hour drive from where we entered the park. Once there, we found the trail.
At least this time there were warnings that although the tree we were hiking to was only 0.8 miles away, it was 212 feet lower in elevation. Well, well how lucky could I be? It was a stroll DOWN the trail.
There's a handicap parking area at that elevation as well. I tried to convince Kathy that I could send her back to the car and catch my ride at the handicap area. She wasn't having any of that. We're here to get exercise.
So away we go to look at more trees. We start with an appetizer of your standard old yellow pine tree. These things as pretty impressive too.
Then we get into the grove of sequoias. They're everywhere. Some were the giant trees and many more just the 10' diameter youngsters.
These are kind of "tweeners", large but not giant. I'm guessing 15 foot diameter at the base.
Then we arrived at "the" tree.
The General Sherman. The world's largest tree based on mass.
This will give a little better idea of the size. The base is over 36 feet in diameter.
It stands 275 feet tall.
That's a whole lot of redwood decking right there. I told Kathy that it would be interesting to know the commercial value of all these trees. It has to be billions. It's a good thing they're protected.
With that tree viewed, we headed off on the Congressional Trail.
I included the above picture to show the size of the sequoias. Those half dozen pines between the two large trees are likely about 60' tall with a trunk about 3' in diameter, if not more...in other words, very mature growth that is dwarfed by the redwoods..
There's a slice of a stump on display here. This slab shows 2,210 years of growth with signs of 80 fires that were severe enough to scar the tree.
Sorry about the dust specs in the photo. The trails are so dusty, it's impossible to keep the lens clear all day. Shots into the sun show my lack of lens maintenance although I clean it every day.
We continue on down the trail through the sequoias of varying immensity.
You wonder how many of these are even alive.
We saw one tree that had greenery on the top that was literally half burned away the entire height.
This was and interesting tree...that I'm standing inside of.
It's burned out for probably 50 feet.
The story is that human interaction in the forest has done a lot more damage trying to prevent fires. Before fire suppression, there were naturally occurring fires periodically that cleared off the forest floor. These fires were never so severe that it caused much damage to the sequoias. Since humans have been putting out the fires, the growth and fuel on the forest floor builds up so that when there is a fire now, it's large and damaging to the trees. So the bottom line is that the fires are actually a good thing for the maintenance of the forest ecosystem and the parks regularly perform controlled burns.
On down the trail I ran into another deer.
They don't have much fear of us. I think this guy was laughing at the funny human with the camera.
We finally arrive at the area which gives us a clue why the trail is called the Congressional Trail.
First we find the President.
Must be the "White Tree House".
Then I entered the Senate chamber.
And what trip down Pennsylvania Avenue would be complete without a visit to the House.
On we go back toward the trail head. They don't ever let any of the fallen timber hamper the trail route here.
There's Kathy in the shadow between the sliced out log that crosses the trail.
This one was a bit larger so they just created a doorway.
With that, we climbed the 212 feet back to the parking lot, visited a museum that displayed a lot about this forest and the sequoias, then leisurely drove the hour back to the RV.
Tomorrow, we turn in the KIA that we've had for a week and almost 700 miles worth of touring. Whatever we spent on the rental was probably saved in fuel for the motorhome.
Our next major port of call is Las Vegas. It's going to take a couple days to get there. I imagine we're also going to see a bit of a spike in the temperature. We'll be wishing for that Banff snow again.
Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment