Lemon Grove
After an amazing breakfast at the plantation inn (Marie Cooked Dutch Cradles) Min and I headed into Sequoia National Park to see the giant trees. We had already seen Sequoias at Yosemite so we were not prepared to be as impressed as we were. The landscape is rugged and mountainous but we had seen Yosemite which has some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve seen anywhere. The park had restaurants, visitor centres and a post office but Yosemite had had those as well as millions more people. If you come to Sequoia National Park you come for the trees, nothing can prepare you for their enormity.
We had briefly popped in at the visitors center to find out walking trails etc and were informed that there was road works that only let traffic through on the hour and if we left in the next 5 minutes it should be right. So we quickly bought a map and left. Travel was up a steep windy road, apparently Americans are not very confident (one may say timid) doing 5-10 mile an hour around corners that were not even hair pin (it was more frustrating as we needed to make it to the road works –poor Lewis I was frustrated and was only the passenger but I had to just ignore it and look at the view. We just made the road works so got through without having to wait another hour and headed to the tree named General Sherman.
General Sherman is the largest living tree by weight and volume in the World. It is only 82m high but the girth of the tree is enormous and it stays incredibly think until near the top, it is truly a sight to see. The top was damaged at some stage but each year it adds more wood to the trunk (each year it adds enough wood for another normal size tree). Later wandering around another part of the forest we forgot how big the Sequoias are and started to think that some of those trees were big again. Then we headed on the Congress trail and saw some of the large named Sequoias again and remembered that the other trees might be large but nothing else had the same size and presence (they only name the biggest tress and have stopped the practice of naming trees). The photos will not do them justice, our memories will not do them justice they are just living monoliths.
It was well past lunch so we headed back to café in the park, Then we walked Bear hill looking for bears but we didn’t see any. We did however see chipmunks and Squirrels and naughty birds (stellas jay). Lewis “helped the sequoias to spread their seed” aka was throwing the pine cones as they only fell under the trees….I kept explaining they had been there doing their thing for thousands of years and probably did not need help but…. For such large trees they have little tiny pine cones.
Went to Morro Rock which turned out to be slightly more up than expected and with my (Lewis) sore legs I didn’t relish the walk. It turned out to be a really nice walk and not hard at all. We saw naughty lizards and there was an amazing view at the end of the trail. Spent some time looking around at the top and then some more time photographing the lizards and debating what they were (we think cameleons as they had the funny eye thing and changed bright bright blue under their throat and tummy when cranky or displaying or having just eaten) one ate a big termite ant thing and turned bright blue as he was wiping his mouth on the rock… very cool (Western Fence lizard – also known as blue bellied lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis).
On the way home we saw a black bear crossing the road heading to bear hill. See the hill did live up to its name, we were on a narrow road and the bear was moving fast so only chance for one photo. But it was very exciting.
We ate at the riverview tavern (a local hangout) once again overlooking the river. Not the best singers but at least there was a live performance from local musicians. Whilst we were eating a little panicked baby came steaming up the rocks away from the rapids and was peeping with alarm running all through under peoples chairs. One of the singers on a break caught it and another local put it in a box whilst looking for its mum (probably got washed down stream a bit in all the water) we hope they found a home for it – it was only little and still fluffy.
Then headed home, bought some Mikes hard lemonade so Lewis can try it and had a Jacuzzi out under the stars (very lovely). They rave about the number of stars that are visible due to the lack of light pollution… there were not as many as you can see is Aus especially if you are out somewhere near Dubbo or similar.
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