Thursday, October 7, 2010

One day, two national parks: Sequoia and Kings Canyon.  We started by getting into Sequoia NP Visitor Center and picked up our maps and travel guide early.  We knew ahead of time that there was road construction, and we had to get to the construction site on the top-of-the-hour for those heading up the mountain.  For the day, we started at 300 feet above sea level and when we were the highest, we were at 8,000 feet.  The highest elevation in the park is Mount Whitney, 14,494 feet. 

How about some park history?  The first of the two parks was Sequoia National Park  established by President Benjamin Harrison in 1890 which made it the second national park to be established.  What was the first national park?  Two weeks after creating Sequoia, the Congress created General Grant NP.  In 1940, Kings Canyon NP was created when FDR was president and the new park absorbed General Grant NP. 

By the time we got to the top of the mountains, we were in the fog or clouds.  At times, when we were driving, we could hardly see past the front bumper of the car, so we couldn’t see the bigger mountains and the snow because of the visibility.  The temperature at the top was 40 degrees.

You guessed it, here’s the ‘where we are today’ photo.  Next to it is a view from half way up the mountain while we were waiting for the flagger at the road construction site.

The above photo is one of the first Sequoia’s we saw near the Visitor Center.  Next is ‘Tunnel Log.’

You can see how foggy/cloudy it was at the top.  When we had lunch at the top, the views were only nearby.  The visibility was terrible.

This is General Grant.  No, the one on the right is General Grant.  Below is the base of the tree and the top of the tree.  This is the second largest tree in the world.  The biggest tree in the world is General Sherman.  We would have taken pictures of it, but to see it we would have had to have gone down 400 steps.  That’s 400 steps back up - too much for me.  So I will settle for the second largest in the world.  General Grant is 267.4 feet tall and 107.6 feet around.