May 15th- Sierra Nevada

We drove up the long and climbing road to the north-west Big Stump Entrance of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.    We were greeted at the top to snow patches but the weather was warm and sunny.  We were right on time to join a park ranger in a tour of General Grant Grove, home of one of 75 groves of the earth’s largest living trees.  Some of these trees are over 2,000 years old and I think they can live for over 3000 years!  The older ones have a ground circumference of over 100ft!  One tree, named the Fallen Monarch, was once used as a home and then a horse stable and we were able to walk right through it.  We enjoyed breathing in the smell of earth and trees as we listened to the park ranger and wandered among these majestic giants.

Later we drove the 36-mile descent into Kings Canyon, descending from 2008m(6589ft) to 1412m (4635ft).  It is the deepest canyon in the US.  The road down is very steep, narrow and winding, and the scenery is spectacular. However the drive took about an hour to descend the 36 miles.    Breath-taking waterfalls await at almost every turn and at the bottom the fierce Kings River flows back-dropped by moss-tinged granite walls that stand thousands of feet tall.  Kings Canyon is surrounded by rugged wilderness and unlike Zion and the Grand Canyon, surprisingly, there were very few tourists here.  There is a trail called the Pacific Crest Trail that runs through Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and stretches from Canada to Mexico.  Maybe next time we visit Mexico, we’ll take this route!!!

We  got a campsite at the bottom and end of the canyon and enjoyed a Canadian camping feel by the fire that evening. 

We hoped to do some hiking the following day but we only managed to see a few viewpoints along the roadside before the rain started coming down hard.  We decided to drive to the top and stay at a campsite up there.  After a very scary drive up the edge of the deepest canyon in the US in the heavy fog and rain we decide it was best to continue down to the foothills so that we didn’t awake to snow the next morning.  We had planned to visit Yosemite, but with the cold weather in Sequoia, we decide instead to head west toward the coast.  Because we had such a late start we ended up driving into the evening and finally found an RV park close to Santa Cruz.