Big trees and big granate mountains = California

Marc slept the whole 4½ hours to our next destination Sequoia National Park, an easy drive and was great to get out of the LA traffic and back to where there was no smog. We found a campground about 20miles out of the park (lemon cove/Sequoia campground) and decided to call it a night, as it had been another pretty big day.

Sequoia National Park: We left the campground early morning and made our way into Sequoia National Park. The drive into the park was fun; first we drove through crazy windy roads in the foot hills. We were finding it hard to imagine any giant trees when all we could see were very dry small foot hills with shrubs being the tallest trees around.

We entered the National Park and were informed to be prepared for delays, as there was roadwork. One bridge we could only get through once an hour on the hour, as it was only one lane. We continued on hoping to get through at 11am.  

First stop at the visitor center to book a tour of the ‘Crystal Caves’. Tickets for the 1pm tour in hand, we then continued the steady climb up into the mountains and the roadwork. The roadwork delays were not too bad, only had to stop twice and both times the wait was only about 15mins. The roads were very windy and I felt a bit like a race car driver.

The road to the Crystal caves was just after all the roadwork, a half an hour drive into another valley (Hank was getting a great work out). We were a bit early for our tour, so we made up some lunch and put some warmer clothes on ready for the cold 10 degrees caves. To start the tour we made our way down the path to the cave entrance.
 

The tour was rad, the tour guide was a little nerdy but still got the information across. We walked into about 3 different rooms in the cave and got to see a bat flying around (which was apparently rare for these caves as they were so cold), loads of stalactites and stalagmites some bigger then others and Marc’s favorite the cave bacon.

After the tour we continued the drive back out of the valley and on towards the ‘Giant forest’ to see our first Giant Sequoia; on the way we got to see our first few and they were huge. We arrived at the forest and went for a walk the trees were huge. On the walk we read all about the trees and how they get so big. The really massive sequoias were about 1000 years old, for the trees to grow the conditions need to be just right, lots of sun, water and shallow soil over bed rock for the roots to grow. The sequoias also need fire to germinate the seeds. We found it all super interesting; my favorite part was the feel of the bark as it was super soft and full of water. On our walk we also got to see 2 marmots living in one of the sequoias. Our next stop after the giant forest was ‘General Sherman’ the largest tree in the world by volume, another huge old tree that was really cool to see.

We left Sequoia national park and made our way towards Yosemite national park for the night a 4-hour drive. We drove past a couple of campgrounds and stupidly kept driving closer to the park that meant we were at a higher altitude. The final place we stopped at was just outside the park and was really cold gain. Marc was really annoyed that we did not stop sooner as now we were in for another really cold night in the car below 0 brrr.

Yosemite National Park: Second really cold night sleeping in the car; not too bad but really happy we have each other to snuggle with. The drive into Yosemite was very scenic, great to see another amazing American National Park. 

Seeing the park in Autumn was not excellent timing as a lot of the walks had been closed so we could not hike up to half dome. Instead we decided to spend the day driving around the park. We drove into the village and visitor centre on the way stopping off to take some photos of the amazing granite mountains and falls that surrounded us. All the trees were changing colour so we got to see some amazing bright yellow, red and orange trees. 

 

The village was small and remote, but this is what made it so special (and expensive) after a quick bite to eat in the village we made our way to see the rest of the park.

The 2-hour drive from the village to the east entrance was beautiful. The Granite Mountains were amazing and the scenery kept changing as we got higher and higher. We drove through the alpine meadow that was hard to believe was so high up in the mountains. The highest point was Tioga Pass Elev 9945 Feet. On the other side of the park we had left California and were back in Nevada. The surroundings had changed again as we were back in the desert; a great drive across Nevada, especially when the sun was setting.

After a really big day of driving we decided to stop at Ely for the night at another campground (our second last night in Hank).