On Monday, we packed up, checked out of the hotel, saw Rachel off on her airport shuttle, and went to IHOP for breakfast. After we finished breakfast, we journeyed 4+ hours north toward Sequoia National Park.
The drive to Sequoia National Park was very interesting. We drove through lots of desert. California is currently experiencing a drought but it was more dry than I really expected. Just yellow/brown sand as far as you can see. I don’t know if it was the highway we were on or what but there was very little between the cities. It was just desolate desert as far as the eye can see…with a old cafe or gas station periodically dotting the landscape. It was straight out of a movie. Who knew it actually looked like that in real life?!?! LOL
Not too far north of LA, we drove past Six Flags Magic Mountain:
Desert mountains? Brown, brown, brown, aaaand MORE brown.
Every once and a while we’d drive past irrigated orchards. While it was a welcome sight, the green looked very out of place in the sea of brown sand. LOL
Almost there!
We were still in ugly desert but we could see mountains in the distance!
At the park entrance! We didn’t have to pay admission into the park because that day was the 150th anniversary of the National Park Service. 🙂
How do I explain the first 30-45 minutes of our drive within Sequoia National Park? In one word: nauseating. LOL According to a guidebook we received in our hotel, the 16 miles of road from the Ash Mountain entrance to Giant Forest includes over 120 curves and 12 switchbacks. I was very glad once we got into the forest and the shear cliffs beside the road were less visible. Ignorance is bliss! 😉
Soon we were in the forest and beginning to see some pretty large trees.
One of the first few giants that we saw!
It is so hard to show the large size of the trees. The thinner trees beside the giants were normal sized trees you’d see at home. Next to the giants, they look like twigs.
Here is a tree next to a car for a sense of scale.
The tree in the center of this picture is the Sentinel tree (which we saw the next day as well). It is right outside the Giant Forest Museum.
Enormous yet it is 42nd on the list of the largest giant sequoias!
After driving so long, we decided to pull off and go to a parking area to stretch our legs. The road led us right past these giant sequoias.
The parking lot was located directly next to Auto Log – a tree that fell in the early 1900s and was used as a driveway.
The tree was so long, it lined the parking lot and the street approach to the parking lot.
The tree roots dwarfed Mike and the boys.
I’m not sure what Ian is doing here. Trying to lift the tree?
Too tall to get the whole tree in one frame! LOL
After that we loaded back into the car to find our hotel and check in.
After not sleeping the 4 hours we’d already driven that day, this one fell asleep after we got back in the car. You know, with 30 minutes left to drive.
The hotel in Sequoia had a main lodge with a restaurant and then the hotel rooms were in dorm-like buildings across the street with separate parking. And the parking lot wasn’t super close to the hotel rooms. And it was uphill to the buildings from the parking lot. And there weren’t elevators in the buildings. And we were on the second floor. And we were 16 million feet up in the air in the mountains. Needless to say, there was much huffing and puffing while unloading the car. It kind of felt like one long asthma attack. LOL
After we got settled in, we hurried off to the visitor center to grab dinner and some food supplies before everything closed up for the night AND it got dark (translation: and was way too scary to drive).
The visitor center had a gift shop and educational exhibits inside. Directly next store was a small general store and deli/restaurant. There was also a campground located nearby and a building with showers.
We got some snacks and breakfast foods to tide us over during hikes and such. After we got the groceries, we ordered food for dinner and ate outside on picnic tables in the cool mountain air.
While we waited for our food to be prepared, we saw stellar jays. They looked very much like blue jays we see at home but were bigger with dark feathers around their heads and necks.
There were a bunch flying around the picnic tables but my bull-in-a-china-shop Matthew kept scaring them off any time I tried to get close enough to take a picture.
These two pictures were the best I got!
After we ate dinner, we headed back to our hotel, grabbed hoodies and flashlights, then hiked a few paths around our hotel registration building.
The hotel recommends guests bring flashlights as there are no lights on the streets or the walkways. Once it gets dark, it is DARK.
The hotel’s registration building. The hotel and restaurants at Sequoia (& Yosemite) are run by the Parks & Resorts division of Buffalo’s Delaware North Companies. 🙂
Gotta have a hiking stick, right?
After it started getting a little too dark for our tastes, we headed back to the registration building. I stayed there to text with mom and use the internet (wifi only in this building, ack!!!) and Mike took the boys back for baths.
Sunset in the forest
Internet service sucked (maybe because 90 people were in the lobby trying to use it?) so it took longer than I anticipated at the registration building. When I got back, the boys were bathed, jammied up, and waiting on me to play a card game before bed.
Time to play “Beat the Parents”!
After a few rounds of “Beat the Parents” we all went to sleep because we had another long day ahead of us!