Sequoia NP

It has been a while since last post. At the beginning, I was so exhausted for such a trip, that I did not feel like writing a lot. I wanted to write a great post and leave it there for a while! And that is what has happened... Now it is more than one week since I wrote it... so it is time to continue updating my blog!

This time, I will talk about Sequoia National Park, which is a 4-5 hours drive from Pasadena/LA. Sequoias are the largest trees in the world and I wanted to see them soon. The NP, as usual, had many more things apart from amazing sequoias and nice hiking trails. I visited this place in mid-May and at that time, snow is melting in the mountains and all streams and waterfalls are at full power ;)




When you enter the park from the South Entrance, you drive for a while next to a nice river with waterfalls. It is quite beautiful and wild.




This was another of the highlights near the Entrance, the Tunnel Rock. Interesting position for those rocks!



In the heights, a huge rock overlooked all this part of the park. That rock is Moro Rock:



There were also some painting by native American which where well worth a stop:




Then, you drive up in the mountains into what is called the Large Trees Forest: sequoias territory. The first landmark I stopped at was the Drive Log, a huge log that fell down long time ago and it is so big you can drive on it with your car... now that is not allowed any more though...



After that very brief stop, I just continued my trip and climbed to the top of Moro Rock, where the views and landscapes were breathtaking.




Next stop, a famous place in many books... You can drive through a fallen sequoia and you can really see the dimensions of these trees when you see your car looking pretty small in the picture!!



Then, time for more hiking, 2.5h more... I could see beautiful meadows in the middle of the mountains...



And even a black bear!!!




And of course, some deers...



And I have realized I did not include any pictures of big trees yet!! And that is what this park is about!! It was so interesting and there are so many things to show that I forgot about the most important thing... hehehe...

Well, time to render tribute to the largest tree in the world: General Sherman Tree. The size of that tree is simply amazing and it is very difficult to show its real size in photos... I have posted 3 in total here. The first one is a lateral view of the base and you can see a person near it. Yes, it is that tiny thing on the left!!



This is me in the typical photo with the tree.



And this is a panorama I have created from several photos. I hope you can feel a little bit of the size of trees we are talking about. ;)



After this visit, I continued driving to the nearby Kings Canyon NP. I will talk about that in the next post.