Sequoia National Park (and Bears!)

 This weekend was so much fun! 

We were up bright and early (although this was a surprise to Mitchell when my alarm went off at 6am) to pack up the car and head out on our journey. We made one stop at a Starbucks for breakfast and to swap drivers, and another to top up on fuel, but made it to our campsite at about 1pm, just in time for lunch. 

We didn't want to waste any sunlight, so instead of setting up camp, we immediately set out on a hike. Our campsite had a trail directly from it to a place called Tokopah Falls, which followed the river to a waterfall. It was only a couple of miles long, but it went through trees, a small meadow, and a rocky patch. We stopped for lunch along the way, on a small shady rock at the side of the river. 

The waterfall itself wasn't very impressive, late summer is really the worst time for waterfalls, as they've all dried up for the year after the winter rains, but there was some water flowing over the rocks and a small pool at the bottom where people were paddling about. It was a bit of a scramble to get down there, but we made it and took in the view down the valley.

We decided not to paddle here as it was pretty busy, and we'd seen some better options on our way in. We stopped at these on our way back to wash the dust and sweat off our feet and ankles which felt really good after a long drive and a hot hike. 

As we were on the way back, we saw some ladies ahead of us taking pictures of a random patch of trees. We couldn't see why, but then something moved and a deer came out! It was very close and walked right past us, pausing to eat some leaves as if she didn't mind at all that we were there. 

We got back to camp and put up our tent. The campground was full, but it still felt very quiet. We put all of our food and toiletries (anything with a scent) into the bear boxes, as bears were known to roam these campsites and break into cars if they smelt food inside! 

After our dinner, the ranger was hosting an evening talk at the campground amphitheater about sequoias and climate change. We learnt a lot about how they perform prescribed burning in the forest and about how the sequoia trees are adapted to withstand low intensity fires. We also heard from a group sat near us that they'd seen bears in the campground every night that week! When we visited another area of the park last year we hadn't seen any at all, so this was kind of scary!

We didn't see any bears that night though and woke up early the next morning to start exploring. Our first stop was the main attraction of the park, the largest tree in the world! There was a path that went from our campsite to this other area, so we took this path. It didn't look very well traveled (there are free shuttle buses that take to and from these locations) and there was grass growing close to the path. There were lots of chipmunks and squirrels running about, and I thought I heard one rustling in a bush up in front of us, when a very small fuzzy bear head popped out! 

We immediately stopped and looked about for its mother, not wanting to get between them. We saw another baby a bit further into the forest, and then saw the adult bear not too far away. The family was less than 50m away and had been walking towards us. We stopped and went a bit further down the path, back the way we came, making sure to make some noise so they knew where we were. They were still walking towards us, but at a diagonal, into the forest. When we thought they'd gone far enough, we carried on along the path, and I could see the mother bear looking at us as we went. It was a little scary, but so amazing to see! 

We made it to along the rest of the trail without incident, so stunned at what we'd seen. We came to a paved path in the middle of the "Giant Forest", an area of giant trees, built with visitors in mind. We found the General Sherman Tree, the biggest tree in the world by mass. It truly was immense, the base was so thick, and it didn't get much thinner as we went up (and up). 

We got some pictures and it wasn't even 10am yet, what a morning!

In this area, there was also a trail for the "congress trees" another group of very large sequoia trees, including the President Tree and the McKinley Tree. There was also trees you could walk through and a cross section of a dead one, which from the rings showed it was thousands of years old. 

After we'd seen everything from this area, we got the shuttle bus to the next stop, the Giant Forest Museum. It had a few displays and a small gift shop where we picked up a map specific to this area of the park, but this was really a stopover to our next destination. We got on another bus to crescent meadow where there were lots of trails to explore. 

We took the trail to Tharp's Log, a house built by a rancher in 1890, made from a fallen tree. There was enough space inside for a table, a bed and a chimney. It was right next to the meadow, so we sat here for a little bit while we ate lunch before carrying on to the next part of the trail. The meadow we walked around was very pretty with lots of green grass in the middle and wildflowers. 

We went past the chimney tree, a tree which was so fire damaged, only one side of the bark remained and it was so tall and empty. We next went to see squatters cabin, built out of logs, which was built by someone who wanted to buy the land before realising it belonged to Tharp. We finished up the loop of the meadow by going to see Dead Giant, a huge, black, burnt tree which had not survived the fire. 

Chimney tree

Squatters cabin

Dead Giant

We were getting tired at this point after walking so many miles, but there was still more to see! We caught the bus back to the Museum and took the Big Trees Trail. The trees on this trail didn't have specific names like the ones by the General Sherman Tree, but they were still very large! They bordered another small meadow and it was nice to walk around in the shade as it was getting hot this time in the afternoon. 

This tree was eating a rock

There were other trails around this area, but we'd seen the best bits and we were so tired by now. We got the bus back to our campsite, but there was a delay as we got near. We waited on the road for a few minutes, and when we started moving, we saw that a tree had fallen on the road and a crew was there clearing it up. It didn't take too long to get back to our campground, and stopped at the market to get an ice-cream. 

We sat at our camp for a little bit, and then walked back to the river we'd visited the day before to do some paddling and cool our hot tired feet. We chilled out here for a while until it was time to go back and start cooking our dinner. 

As we ate, we were slowly surrounded by chipmunks, and they came so close, standing on the rocks around us to get a better view of our food. After dinner, we set out our picnic blanket, grabbed the pillows and watched the stars. 

That night, I was woken up just before midnight by a loud clang! It sounded as if someone had hit one of the bear boxes with a very large bat. There were several more bangs from the same direction, and this continued for a while (maybe about 10 minutes, but it's hard to tell as I was pretty sleepy). I then heard a car go past and what was probably a ranger get out. The banging stopped and I heard the man from the car tell someone that it had been a bear. I think they then split up to go and search for it, or at least make sure it had left the campground. I think I also heard another loud bang in the early morning, but I slept through what happened then. 

In the morning, we were up early and packed all of our stuff back into the car. But we weren't done with the park! We drove down to a road where years and years ago, a tree had fallen across the road. Rather than clearing it, they had just carved a tunnel through it and when it's not busy you can drive straight  through it! Our car is quite small, but even if we'd had one of those huge pickup trucks, we still could have made it through with room to spare. 

Our final stop was called Moro Rock. It's a very thin trail which gets very busy, so I'd wanted to do it first thing in the morning. It was very short, but almost completely made up of stairs. We went up and up a sheer rock with no trees or plants growing on it. But when we got to the top, you could see in all directions. It wasn't the highest peak, but it was the highest in the immediate area and you had a great view of the tree covered mountain range and the winding road below. 

After that, it was time to start the long journey home. Hope you enjoyed reading about our adventure!

Lots of love,

Emily and Mitchell

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