In Search of Giants
As we traveled east across the state of California, looking at the GPS we thought, no, it must be wrong. It would say something like 78 miles to go, but then the estimated time would be around 2 hours. How could that be?
Then, we started to see smoke from a fire somewhere ahead. Planes and helicopters were flying over a valley trying to put the fire out. Was that the reason for the GPS? A detour? Nope.
We were getting closer to Sequoia National Park, but the GPS was still acting crazy. How could it take us over an hour to go 32 miles? Anyway, we didn't care, we were excited to see giant sequoias, but this drive was taking longer than we thought.
Finally, we were inside the park. Just north of the Foothills Visitor Center, we stopped by a granite boulder on Generals Highway. This was originally the way you had to drive into the park. It was dug out by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the 30's, but as vehicles became bigger a wider road was created in 1997.
We drove a little further up the Generals Highway (named for General Sherman and General Grant) and saw a beautiful place along the Kaweah River to take some pictures.
After this amazing stop the road began to climb. It was the craziest, curviest road I have ever been on. It was like 45 minutes of a speed limit of 10 miles per hour and with good reason. These corners were no joke. The road twisted and turned for miles and miles as we kept going up, but no sequoia trees anywhere.
Now the GPS mystery was making sense!
We had been racing the daylight for some time and finally the sun was setting and we were realizing that we were not going to make it to see the Sequoia trees today so we stopped to take in the sunset at Amphitheater Point.
Well...this had been fun, but the big trees were going to have to wait until tomorrow. We now had to weave our way back down this insane road and get to our hotel in the dark and find some food. Tomorrow would be a new day in search of the giants!