I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I ended up where I intended to be.
Our road trip continued with Sequoia National Park! Welcome to the land of giants. This park is such a colossal beauty, and is one of my favorites. The park is located in the Southern Sierra Nevada, right underneath Kings Canyon National Park. Sequoia is home to some of the largest trees in the world, and 84% of the park is back country wilderness.
Standing in a forest surrounded by these massive trees, was such a truly magical experience like no other. It really humbles you. It truly brings to fruition that we are all connected. The atoms in these trees and the atoms in your body all came from a star that exploded. And the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than the atoms in your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics. We are all stardust.
We woke up early and left our cabin to check out Sequoia. Our cabin was on a farm in the Sequoia National Forest, and if you’re lucky, you get to be greeted by the neighbors’ Great Pyrenees who hops the fence to come and say hello. There is no road in the parks boundaries that cross the Sierra Nevada, and the park was founded in 1890 to cease all logging operations in the Giant Forest.
Giant Forest
The Giant Forest was the most anticipated stopover, which houses the General Sherman Tree. That’s what I was looking forward to the most since the General Sherman is the largest tree on Earth. The Giant Forest also houses five of the ten largest trees in the world. Giant Sequoia groves grow only on the western slope of the Sierra Nevadas, and the Giant Forest is one of the greatest. I would love more than anything to go back to this specific grove during golden hour as the sun is setting. I can just imagine how pretty all those trees would look with their red color reflecting in the sun. It’s really hard to tell the scale of these trees in the photos, so you’ll have to look for the “normal” trees surrounding them to compare in scale. Being in that grove surrounded by these giants was very serene. Standing under those trees really makes you realize how small you are, and how little amount of time you have been around on this Earth for.
Tokopah Falls
Next up we did the 3.8 mile hike to Tokopah Falls. It was a peaceful stroll starting out at the Lodgepole camping area, and led up to a glacial valley with a 1,200 foot cascading waterfall. You won’t see many sequoias here, but the valley views sure are lovely. The trail follows the Kaweah River, and along the way there are quite a few swimming hole spots for a hot day. The best part of this hike was seeing a black bear on our way back down! I named him Eugene.
On our drive back from Tokopah Falls, we found this rock garden, and of course being a girl, I just had to stop.
Everything about Sequoia was so beautiful and vast. From the biggest trees in the world to its massive glaciated valley with sweeping vistas and rolling hills. To close it all out, in the sheer eloquence of John Muir, “And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
