We had another lovely day at King’s Canyon. Another bonus of it being an empty park is instead of driving down to the General Grant Tree parking lot we walked the 3/4 mile down the hill and then did the trail.
See We are really happy this is the first stop after Truckee. Everything is lovely here. The Giant Sequoias are magnificent.
What’s crazy upon first arrival is seeing trees that were giant in the campground a mile above are dwarfed by these true giants.
So big. They’re just so big. But it’s deceptive too. They look like regular trees with fire scars etc…but as you get closer it just becomes intense.
The General Grant Tree is the 3rd largest tree by volume. (The 2 largest are in Sequoia National Park, the General Sherman Tree, 1st, & the President Tree, 2nd. However if you include the branches in the volume, then the General Grant Tree would be 2nd. The largest branch on the General Grant Tree is 4.5’ in diameter. That’s Vera (well almost, Vera minus 4.5”) hanging off the side of the tree over 100’ in the air.
The General Grant Tree is 40’ in diameter (at its widest point) and 268’ tall. That’s our behemoth of our RV sitting INSIDE the trunk of the tree.
??time… How many basketballs 🏀 could you fill inside the trunk of the tree? How many ping pong balls? 🏓
The General Grant Tree was commemorated in 1956 as a living shrine to the men and women in the Armed Forces.
The hollowed our downed tree was very neat to walk through. The girls and I were playing around fantasizing about what it would be like living inside this enormous trunk. It was very fun for a minute…or 30.
159,000 🏀 basketballs. 37 million 🏓 ping pong 🏓 balls
Something new I learned about Giant Sequoias. Giant Sequoias do NOT reproduce by sprouts like the Coast Redwoods. The Giant Sequoias are also not as tall as Coast Redwoods but are much thicker trees. The height of the Giant Sequoias reach up to 311’ tall and can have a diameter of up to 40’. Coast Redwoods are taller at 379’ but only (ha) get up to a diameter of 22’. They are in the same family but do NOT share the same genus. Giant Sequoias Sequoiadendron giganteum and Coast Redwoods Sequoia sempervirens. Coast Redwoods grow along the Northern Californian coast and a bit of the Oregon coast and reproduce by seed (like a tomato seed) and sprouts from the parent tree. Giant Sequoias grow along the western slopes of the Sierra and reproduce by seed (like an oatmeal flake) only. Another real interesting difference is Giant Sequoias have much thicker bark, up to 31” thick compared to Coast Redwoods at 12” thick. I really thought these two trees were more closely related and similar, just one was a coastal tree and the other was an inland tree, but they are not.
We went back to the RV, packed up and left the campsite and drove the 8 miles down to Hume lake.
The road down to the canyon floor is closed until spring and we’d all like to come back here and check it out the river at the bottom of the canyon. We are liking it here at King’s Canyon.
From there we drove back up the hill and down towards Sequoia National Park. Unfortunately the road connecting Kong’s Canyon and Sequoia are closed so we had to drive back out, down, and then back in. Which we probably would’ve had to of done anyway because vehicles longer than 22ft can’t really access the park. We stopped in Visalia to rent a car, did some grocery shopping and entered Sequoia.
Sequoia National Park. 20th National Park.
The drive already in was hairy so I’m happy we rented a car. No one wants to build a fire so we’re just hanging out in the RV being silly. And with silly of course also comes annoying. The girls were being silly but could tell it was about 5min from somebody crying or getting in a bad mood so we shut it down. Of course that’s when Edwin starts getting hyper and I can see Vera’s now getting irritated. After we reminded her that she was pretty annoying herself 5 minutes ago and this is just dads sense of humor I’m pretty sure the funniest moment was when Vera then just nonchalant said well then he should “Buy a better one.”
And that’s the end of the night tonight. Girls are writing in journdd as is abs I’m writing this. No internet here but I’m saving it as a draft. Determined not to stay far behind like I have this last month.