Our 7th day of vacation was a busy one. We had a lot of sight-seeing and a lot of driving to do. In order to fit everything in, we made sure we were up early so that we could be on the first shuttle bus to the Giant Forest Museum.
This one was obsessed with hiking sticks. LOL
This one was obsessed with maps. LOL
Waiting for the shuttle
The shuttles were like full-size city buses. God bless those drivers. I thought we were going to roll over or die about 93 times that day. LOL
Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite were a dream come true to Matthew. So much to climb on. LOL
Right outside the Giant Forest Museum is the Sentinel tree. It is an average sized sequoia but is still absolutely enormous.
“If you think the giant tree in front of you is big, in one sense you are right. The Sentinel, a 2,200-year-old sequoia, is a monster – compared to most trees. But in this land of giants, the Sentinel is just average. In the grove of sequoias that surrounds you, some trees are nearly twice as large as the Sentinel. At 700 tons, the Sentinel Tree weighs more than two fully loaded jumbo jet airplanes – yet it is still just an average sequoia tree. Sequoias are the world’s largest trees, due to the volume of their trunks. Other trees grow taller or have greater width, but none has greater volume.” On the right side, they compare the Sentinel with the largest known sequoia, the General Sherman Tree (40 ft wide, 311 ft tall, weighing 1,385 tons, and 3,200 years old).
How is that for an “average” sequoia tree?
The white line on the ground indicated both the width and height of the Sentinel. The trees are so big that it is a little hard to wrap your head around their enormous size even when you’re standing in front of it. Seeing the white line really kind of blows your mind.
After that we explored the Giant Forest Museum a little bit.
This was a great tool to help us understand just how big the trees are compared to other large objects: cypress tree, space shuttle, blue whale, the Titanic, a redwood, a sugar pine, a dinosaur, and the Statue of Liberty. Apparently, a giant sequoia is roughly the size of 275 elephants stacked on top of each other. 😉
I thought this pine cone display was super cool. The sequoia pine cone is in the bottom left corner. The enormous pine cone in the middle is a sugar pine cone. That is the tree directly to the left of the Statue of Liberty in the last picture.
After a quick browse of the museum, it was time to get our hike on! 🙂
Our complete lack of planning set us off on this very nice trail. We thought we were heading toward the General Sherman Tree. We ended up going in a big ol’ loop around a meadow. It was beautiful but it wasn’t what we planned and kind of ate into the time we had to spend sight-seeing. LOL
Notice Matthew way ahead and nowhere near the rest of us? This was a common theme. We may or may not have told him he was in danger of getting attacked by mountain lions and bears in an attempt to get him to stay with the rest of us. 😉
The pine needles on the ground made the air smell like Christmas trees. 🙂
“The tract of land on which this tablet has been erected, together with four other tracts of land, all within the heart of the Giant Forest, was purchased from private owners with funds subscribed by the National Geographic Society together with an appropriation by the Congress of the United States. These areas were deeded to the United States on December 30, 1916, for the benefit of and to serve the people of the nation.”
Enormous trees everywhere!
Looking across the meadow
We saw LOTS of deer during the second half of our vacation. LOL
The pathway around the meadow was made from wooden planks.
After our little detour on the Big Trees Trail, we decided to take the shuttle to see the General Sherman Tree (instead of hiking there as we had initially planned. LOL)
The entrance to the General Sherman Tree hiking paths had this felled sequoia serving as a tunnel.
The top of the largest tree in the world 🙂
Pictures do not adequately convey just how darn big this tree was. LOL
We went on the other side of the tree to get pictures away from the crowd that formed around the sign. These pictures actually turned out a bit better because the lighting was more even (translation: no direct sunlight on the tree).
Sunlight peaking through the canopy
To get a sense of scale, can you see the people at the bottom of the trees posing for pictures? These were just unnamed, average ol’ sequoias in the Giant Forest.
Looking at an educational sign about the tree in front of them
General Sherman Tree is in the middle of the picture. You can kind of see people around the base of the tree. On the tree at the left, you can see a big fire scar. The trees grow bark around fire scars. Also, for a sense of scale, there is a man in a red shirt and white hat standing near the fence next to that tree.
One last picture with the General Sherman Tree
After this, we took the shuttle bus back to the Visitor Center. We ate a quick lunch at the restaurant there and then got in our car to head off toward our next adventure! To be continued…..