It was Friday night last night and more than 1/2 the campground was full so the best spot left still left us at an angle. Edwin woke up with it still bothering him and since we had the rented truck he ran down into town and bought some blocks for the RV. The parking spot was a little slanted but the campsite itself is great.
When Edwin got back with the blocks the girls and I drove the few miles down to the visitor center for an hour while he re-parked the RV.
We got a little bit of a late start up the hill, but we made our way up the hill to the Giant Forest to the big trees. Sequoia National Park has the 1st and 3rd largest tree by volume. The General Sherman Tree at 274.9’ tall and 36.5’ in diameter and the President Tree.
Even up close it hard to fathom the size of these trees. The picture below helps put the General Sherman into prospective. At 180’ up in the air the diameter of the tree is still 13.7 FEET. Again, that at 180 feet up in the air. The largest BRANCH is 6.8 feet in diameter. Just craziness. Back in the 1940s a branch fell off the General Sherman tree that was 6 feet in diameter (a branch almost as big as Edwin wide) and 130 feet long. That’s bigger than any tree east of the Mississippi.
The immensity is just unreal.
It the General Sherman Tree grew in the middle of freeway…
If you laid the General Sherman Tree down on a football field…
If you put the General Sherman Tree on a scale…
My 2 other favorites are the President and Chief Seqouyah.
Look at this crazy tree, looks pretty normal from one side…
Here’s the other side…completely burned out…and still alive.
Here’s another cool burned out tree.
Giant Seqouias are a resistant to fire, drought, and insects.
Chameleon, turtle, rhino?
Talked about the importance of fire yesterday…here’s a visual. The seeds of a Giant Sequoia only the size of an oatmeal flake, so it’s important that they gave bare soil and sunlight in order to begin growing.
View of Mt. Whitney (the tallest mountain in the lower-48 at 14,505’ tall) on the way down the hill to the campground.
We got to camp and enjoyed the evening. The river ran right next to the campsite.
