Sequoia NP & Kings Canyon NP, CA

#114 (November 22, 2022): Before leaving Nevada, the kids visited the campground’s petting zoo to say goodbye to the sheep, goats, donkeys, and most memorably the water buffalo. We have a long road ahead of us today. In fact, this may be our longest drive yet with the RV attached. We drove through the barren Mojave Desert, passing Joshua trees and the dried Mojave River, into green, fertile Southern California, passing dairy farms, grapevines, almond trees, lemon groves, and orange groves. What a contrast of scenery!

Unfortunately, it seems we are racing the sun every day since daylight savings time. Since the sun set today at 4:41 pm, we ended up driving the last hour “up” the long, narrow, windy road to our campground, Sequoia Resort & RV Park in Badger, California, in the dark. We ascended over 2,500 feet in that final hour. Sheesh! Thankfully, Mawmo and Dado drove their small rental car ahead of us on this blind, narrow road and warned us when a car was coming via walkie-talkies, so Chris knew when to hug the inside a little more! “Car coming!”

#115 (November 23, 2022): The national park for today: Kings Canyon National Park! Although Kings Canyon National Park is lesser known than its adjoining sister park, Sequoia National Park, it certainly is not less beautiful or less impressive.

We started today’s adventure at the visitor center (of course) for the film, exhibits, maps, and information. We then drove to General Grant Grove to find the General Grant Tree. It was massive (270 feet tall)! The trees in this entire grove are unreal! Sequoia trees have a quiet majesty that is hard to describe with words and impossible to fully capture with a camera. As we walked the grove, we walked through a fallen sequoia tree that now serves as a super fun tunnel. Later, we took our picture with the Tennessee Tree, a sequoia with a resilient history of surviving more burns and fires than most trees.

Interestingly, sequoias have an ironic relationship with fire. Although too much “intense” fire can kill sequoia trees, fire is actually helpful and in fact needed for sequoias to reproduce (the fire opens the pinecones so that the seeds inside are released) and to thrive (fire clears the forest floor for saplings to grow with more sunlight and nutrients). Unfortunately, recent wildfires since 2015 have been devastating to the entire sequoia population; in fact, the park’s newspaper stated that 19% of all large sequoias have died from fires in 2020 & 2021 alone. That’s a crazy high number!

Next, we drove north to Hume Lake to walk around the lake for a bit. The kids found snail shells that they thought were so pretty. They were horrified when they soon realized that the shells were filled with foul-smelling liquid that neither hand sanitizer nor baby wipes fully took away! Oh dear! We needed to find a bathroom with soap and water. On our way, we stopped at an overlook of Kings Canyon to take a quick picture. Not thinking, Emily asked Dado to take a picture of the group. He eagerly agreed. She handed him her iPhone. He held the phone up to his eye and then quickly pulled it away realizing he couldn’t see us through it. Seeing his confusion, we explained how it worked and how he simply had to look at the screen and push the button when he was ready. After taking a finger-blocked partial selfie and a few unintentional videos, he successfully snapped his first photo! Bless! The kids were in disbelief that he had never taken a picture with a phone before. We all laughed; it was pretty hilarious! We had just witnessed Dado’s first attempts at taking his first photo using a cellphone. It was a bit of a eureka moment for him! He did a great job and took a great photo!

Because there is ice and snow on the roads, the popular Kings Canyon Scenic Byway into the canyon for which the park is named is closed for the season. Our overlook photo will have to suffice for this trip. In addition, other parts of the park are closed due to either recent fires or fires still burning. Rats!

Well, even though we weren’t able to see a large majority of the park today due to closures, we are thankful to have seen the majestic sequoia trees in General Grant Grove.

#116 (November 24, 2022): Today is Thanksgiving! What better way to celebrate than staying home and resting?! Thankfully, Mawmo and Dado are staying in a small one-bedroom studio cabin onsite, so Emily and Mawmo can tag-team the Thanksgiving meal by splitting up the menu’s dishes between the two tiny kitchens. At lunch, we ate turkey breast, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, stuffing, green beans, rolls, strawberry pretzel salad, and chocolate chess pie. Yummy!

We enjoyed the rest of the day with puzzles, games, and a casual walk around the beautiful campground. We have so much to be thankful for!

#117 (November 25, 2022): From our campground, we drove an hour south to Sequoia National Park. We spent the day driving north and seeing the sights on Generals Highway, which connects Sequoia National Park to its sister park, Kings Canyon National Park. The other side roads in Sequoia are closed for the season. We stopped at the Foothills Visitor Center, drove by Tunnel Rock, and found huge acorns and buckeyes near a former Native American outdoor community kitchen at Hospital Rock before parking to use the park’s shuttle buses for the more crowded interior portion of the park. Because today is a holiday weekend, this place is packed with people, and parking is very limited!

The shuttle bus dropped us off at General Sherman Grove where we found the General Sherman Tree, the world’s largest tree. At 275 feet tall and 36 feet wide at its base, General Sherman dwarfs all its admirers. NPS estimates that the General Sherman tree is 2,200 years old. Wow! To think that this same exact tree had already been growing about 200 years before Jesus was born and yet still stands before me alive and growing, boggles my mind and gives me chills. To stand below it, gazing up at its dominating height and volume, imagining all the history this single tree has witnessed and survived in its lifetime is both chilling and humbling! If this tree could talk, what wisdom would it share? What caution would it give?

The Giant Forest Museum has a fantastic display on all-things sequoia. After visiting the museum, one leaves with an even greater respect for these ancient gentle giants whom we admire for their quiet majesty and overwhelming size, and yet whose humble beginnings can be compared to the Parable of the Mustard Seed. Although sequoias are known for their dominance in size and volume in the tree world, they certainly don’t get an advantage or head start with giant beginnings. In fact, it is surprising to see how small they begin life. Sequoia seeds resemble thin flakes of oatmeal, stored in tiny 2-inch pinecones (think the size of a chicken egg) that then grow into teeny-tiny saplings (think a toothpick for a trunk) that then take 500-750 years to reach full height. Furthermore, sequoias face daunting odds. It is estimated that only one in a million sequoia seeds actually germinate or make it to a sapling, and only one in a billion make it to a mature giant sequoia tree. Good grief!

It seems everything about sequoia trees commands respect: from their tiny humble beginnings and beating the odds, to their persistence and reliance on fire to thrive, to their dominating size and mind-boggling length of life, incredible! So many spiritual parallels here! We are in awe, thankful to have stood in their presence, humbled by their quiet majesty! No wonder these cute tiny pinecones are so beloved by the national park service, decorating every ranger’s hat and belt across the country; they represent way more than just a cute little pinecone!

Before driving back to our campground, we swung into the visitor center in Kings Canyon for Dado and the kids to turn in their completed Junior Ranger book that they had worked on together and to take the Junior Ranger pledge. They received two Junior Ranger badges in return for their team efforts. Not surprisingly, Dado was the most excited of the recipients! Ha!

Emily spent the rest of the drive snapping photos out the truck window of the spectacular fall scenery and sunset that we were witnessing. Oh, the beauty around us! God is so good! No doubt, His character and attributes are displayed in all of nature! How thankful we are that sequoias have given us a little better grasp and glimpse of His quiet majesty and eternal presence that continues throughout the ages!