Sequoia National Park

Hello, again! It has been quite a while since I’ve shared an adventure. At the beginning of July, we flew out to CA for a friend’s retirement. Since we were already out there, we decided to take a mini vacation to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. The trip was too amazing not to share. We spent three full days in the park and saw everything we could see. A section of the park is still closed from the October 2021 wildfires. Nevertheless, there was still plenty to see and hike! Here’s a recap of the first day.

We drove from Lemoore Naval Station to the Ash Mountain park entrance. As we approached the park, we stopped to see Tunnel Rock.

General Highway takes you through the park. It has lots of twists and turns as you gain elevation. The first sighting of big trees were The Four Guardsman. of course we had to stop for a photo!

Our next stop was at the Museum. We wanted to catch the shuttle to hike Moro Rock. Before getting on the shuttle, I had to give this one a hug!

The hike up Moro Rock is mostly stairs(about 400 stairs!) and you are rewarded with amazing views of the Canyon.

After climbing back down, we walked over to the Parker Group of Sequoia trees. The sheer size of the trees are impressive. I did my best to try to show the size. Let’s just say they are giant or mammoth.

We continued our walk to tunnel tree. The tree that fell years ago and they cut a hole for vehicles to drive through. Fun!

From here, we decided to walk back to the museum instead of catching the shuttle. It was about 1.5 miles through the giant forest and the trail included many giant trees!

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This short hike was one of my favorites. We saw hardly anyone and we saw a lot of big trees. We made it back to the car and enjoyed our picnic lunch. Side note. In every parking lot there are signs warning you not to leave food in your cars because of bears. When I saw the first sign in an over crowded parking lot, I thought, no way would we see a bear with this many people around. I changed my thoughts after we saw a Mama Bear and cub on a well traveled trail. More of that in a minute… first we headed to General Sherman. The largest tree on the planet.

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After visiting General Sherman, we hiked the Congress Trail. This hike was also one of my favorites. There were so many BIG trees! It was a 3ish mile loop with big trees and where we saw Mama bear & cub.

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After our Congress trail hike, we loaded back into the car agreed not to leave food in the car anymore! Bears are definitely everywhere! We stayed at Wuksachi Lodge in Sequoia NP. On our way back from dinner, we saw this Big Brown Bear!

The first day was packed with fun. I need to wrap up this post because it’s taken me 3+ days to write. We are in the process of moving and I was using wabisabisole as a distraction from the chaos! I’ll share the next two days here soon. As always, thanks for reading.