I met up with my brother and sister-in-law in Visalia to travel with them for the next few days.  The plan was to visit three National Parks, Sequoia, Kings Canyon, and Yosemite, and then continue on to Napa Valley.  Our day at Sequoia was beautiful and sunny, not too hot or too cold.

It was good to have people to travel with for a while, if only to have someone to say “Hey, look at that!” to!  I’m guessing they got a slightly better view from the convertible than I did from the FJ, but I still like my vehicle better and wouldn’t trade it!

Climbing up into the Sierra Nevada mountains into Sequoia NP, the view of the mountains was just spectacular.  The road was a lot of fun too, twisting and winding as we climbed, making me think how fun it would be on a motorcycle.

Although as we got higher, the smoke from nearby wildfires started to create a haze that turned the mountains into a mysterious landscape of progressive hombre blues.  I never did smell the smoke though, so the smoke must have been more in the distance.

Of course, Sequoia is famous for its big trees, and there were plenty of those, although more scattered and in smaller groves than on the Avenue of Giants.  Below you can see my bro and sis-in-law on this fallen tree for scale.  This is the auto tree, which is apparently called that because a lot of famous vehicles have been driven onto it.  Because I guess if you can… you do!

And naturally we had to drive though the tunnel tree.

Sequoia is the home of the General Sherman tree, the largest tree in the world by volume.  The top is dead, so it’s not growing in height, but the trunk continues to gain in girth every year, so the volume is still increasing.  I’ll be honest, it just didn’t feel as big as The Giant on the Avenue of Giants.  As a matter of fact, I’m afraid that I got a bit annoying because I kept saying things like, “that’s nice, but on the Avenue of the Giants…”  I had great hopes for Sequoia NP, but aside from the beautiful mountain scenery, I think I was a bit disappointed.  On the other hand… it was decidedly better than a day in the office in front of a computer, so I won’t complain too much!

We even found a tree to walk though, which was pretty cool.

From Sequoia we continued to drive north to Kings Canyon NP.  The two seem to be managed together, although there are separate ranger stations, and the park map even covers both parks together.  Perhaps because none of us knew much about Kings Canyon, and therefore had no expectations, we were all amazed by what we found there!  The drive down into the canyon is a dead end in-and-out route of about 30 miles each way, through the most beautiful deep gorge carved by Kings River.  [I’ll also confess that when the picture below was taken we had just discovered that apparently I have wimpy little girly arms, and couldn’t throw a rock across a river to save my life!  How humiliating!  I’ll have to start practicing…  But we had a good laugh at my expense anyway.]

At the end of the road, at a place creatively named End Of The Road, we enjoyed the stunning spikey cliffs rising all around us.  Another noteworthy thing about Kings Canyon is that is seems to be relatively undiscovered by the hoards of tourists that visit the more major parks.  There were other people there naturally, but not in numbers that detracted from our enjoyment of the location itself.

There would be plenty to explore here if you wanted to spend more time, especially on the subject of geology, and we loved the look of these marble waves, caused by volcanic action at the edge of the continental plate lifting the prehistoric sea floor.  There’s a series of “Roadside Geology” books that I love, and I’d like to get the one for Northern California and come back here some day to explore more.

The road itself was just plain fun too, hanging over the cliff edge and twisting through the gorge, every turn revealing another breathtaking panorama.  You can see the road on the left cliff face below.

It was late afternoon by the time we drove out again, and the sinking sun highlighted the folds in the mountains beautifully.  There’s plenty of camping in the gorge itself, and I almost regretted that I had a bed to go to that night, as I would have loved to have seen the sunrise there as well.  What a hidden gem Kings Canyon is, what a dreamscape…