Sequoia National Park

Redwood vs Sequoia Trees: these tall, straight, beautiful trees are in the same family but are different species.  The Redwoods grow mainly on the California coast, get their moisture from the fog and air, have a shallow root system, they are slimmer than Sequoia.  The Sequoia only grow on the western bluffs of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, get their water from the snow pack on the forest floor and have a tap root that grows deep to collect this water and keep them from falling as easily.  Sequoia's are bigger in diameter but just as tall.  Their bark is spongy and thus they are poor conductors of fire, so fire doesn't kill them off--that would be wind, insects and getting so tall they topple over. As a matter of fact fire management for these forests is important because this helps the pine cones whose seeds burst open and provide nutrients for new growth.  Before 2000, fires were banned for almost a century so we almost lost these trees.  We traveled to Visalia, Ca. to overnight in the local Walmart parking lot, detached the car and drove up to Sequoia National Park.  Because a small percent of the park was open, we saw all that was open in an afternoon.  We started out in shorts and t-shirts and ended up in sweats as we climbed in elevation. 

In the canyon ran a rapid creek that looked like you could get a raft going and have fun



Elevations in this park climb to 14,000 ft.--Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the lower
48 states.  We could not even get a picture because of impassable roads but this gives an example 

The Museum was informative and gave a good contrast to the trees

Sequoia Grove

This along with the pounding stone below served as a kitchen for the Indians

Silver Lupines and an orange wildflower were abundant. I guess we were just enough
south of Yosemite (3 hours) that the warmer temps brought them out in the lower elevations.
 Another tree we found here and at Yosemite was the Manzanita Tree--google it, very unique. 



This is the biggest of the Giant Sequoia --world's largest tree

This great afternoon brought us back to the RV in time to walk over to KFC where I found a box of chicken there now costs $26! I refused to spend this much so we walked to the grocery and bought some fried chicken for our dinner--we decided once a year we could eat this unhealthy!  But we did have a funny occurrence--when the teen working in the deli saw my Apple Sweatshirt he said--OMG is that a vintage Apple Shirt and when I explained to him that it was indeed a relic of selling the Apple Computers back in the early 90's.  He said that it was a collectors item and would I consider selling it to him.   I turned him down and came home and googled it! Kids watch your dad, I am the owner of a collectors item!