Aug 25 Day 9

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Day 9, and today's thoughts are "farming", and "BIG, no actually more like HUGE trees"!!

Another day topping out at 100 degrees, yeah!!  We put on our cooling vests and head out to explore Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. I had read on the National Park website yesterday that there is road construction in the Southern section of the parks, and you can expect delays up to an HOUR!  We had no interest in sitting on the road stuck in traffic in this heat. Rather than entering the parks by the South entrance and getting stuck in that traffic, we chose to stay out in the Central Valley as we headed North. This allowed us to avoid the construction, and enter the park via the North entrance.

This route choice took us through the farming area of the Central Valley. We must have seen 40 miles of orange orchards. We did see some fairly ripe fruit on many of the trees.

We also saw many miles of grapes vineyards. Some of the vineyards had workers picking and packing the grapes.

We even saw a number of olive orchards. Olives trees are pretty popular in this area. We also ran across a number of large cherry tree orchards.

This was an odd section of palms along the roadside??? Not sure why they were there, but they looked pretty neat, kind of like sentinels guarding the orange trees.

After seeing so many different types of agriculture, I spent a little time researching what is actually grown in the Central Valley. Here is what I found... The Central Valley is one of the world's most productive agricultural regions in the US. On less than 1 percent of the total farmland in the United States, the Central Valley produces 8 percent of the nation’s agricultural output by value. Also, its agricultural productivity relies on irrigation from both surface water diversions and groundwater pumping from wells. About one-sixth of all the irrigated land in the U.S. is in the Central Valley.

After crossing the farming areas, we started our climb from Central Valley floor up to 7000 feet, where we entered King's Canyon NP.

They are refurbishing the park entrance area.

We spent some time snooping around the visitor center. Since it was already lunch time, we decided to take a break and eat at the parks restaurant. Lennie also spent some time in the park gift shop, no surprise there...

After lunch and shopping, we headed off to one of the biggest attractions of this park, the Giant Sequoia trees. King's Canyon NP, and Sequoia NP are home to the two largest trees known to exist on earth. The largest is called the General Sherman Tree and is farther south in Sequoia NP. The second largest is in this northern area of the park, and it is called the General Grant Tree. 

We headed over to the trail head for the General Grant Tree Trail, and as soon as you hit the parking area you are greeted with these giants. With the cars in the foreground, you get a little idea of the size of these trees, and these are small compared to others we will see.

Here is a shot of another tree taken from the parking area. Note that I circled the head of a visitor who is up on the trail standing right next to the trunk.  That little head gives you some perspective!!

This was another tree, actually two trees joined at the base, that could be seen in the parking area. This tree is called the Two Sisters Tree. Again, I tried to take most of the photos with at least one person in the shot, otherwise you would not have any idea about true size of these trees.

The Two Sisters is very tall, and it is actually very hard to photograph due to it's size.

There are hundreds of these giants in the park.  Every where you turn, you see more. Notice the size of the trunk on this tree versus the normal size trees surrounding it.

Notice the visitors walking down the trail to the right?

Not much to say, other than WOW. Again, these are so big, they are actually hard to photograph well.

Many of these trees are over 300 feet tall.

This is a section of one of the trees that fell many years ago. The center rotted away, and people actually walk through it to get from one section of the trail to another. You can see a visitor in the trunk.

We finally make it to the General Grant Tree. 

The tree was named in 1867 after Ulysses S. Grant, Union Army general and the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877). Many years later, President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed it the "Nation's Christmas Tree" on April 28, 1926. 

Due in large part to its huge base, the General Grant tree was thought to be the largest tree in the world prior to 1931, when the first precise measurements indicated that the General Sherman was slightly larger. 

On March 29, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared the tree a "National Shrine", a memorial to those who died in war. It is the only living object to be so declared

The General Grant tree is estimated to be 1,650 years old. It's circumference at the ground is 107 feet. Four feet above the ground, the trunk diameter is 29 feet. Even at 180 feet above the ground, the trunk is still 13 feet in diameter !!

Here is a shot of the top section of the General Grant Tree.

I added a blue circle around an adult visitor off to the right of the General Grant Tree. That should give some perspective to the size of this giant !

This area of the park also housed a small cabin that was once used by timber men, and later it housed the first park ranger of King's Canyon.

The cabin was not very large, but was still in pretty good shape.

This sign was interesting. Imagine being a timber man back the late 1800's and making your way to this area of the US to cut some trees. The sign indicates it took 2 men, 9 days to cut one section of one of these trees. And to top it off, no one actually believed it was real :)

As with most of these trees, it takes multiple photos to get the entire tree. Here is the lower trunk section...

And here is looking upward. You still cannot see the top.

One more tree with a couple of visitors nearby.

Well, after spending a few hours wandering the giant Sequoia trees, they all start looking the same, and the wow factor actually wears off. Kind of like driving on a 70 mph highway, working up to the speed seems fast, but after traveling at that speed for a while, it seems normal, and 55 seems like a crawl.

So, we hop back on the bike and drive down the 6000 foot descent back to the Central Valley floor. Once down in the valley, we pass through Fresno and make our way up to Merced, where we will stay for the next two nights. 

Tomorrow we will visit Yosemite National Park, where we hope to get some good pictures of places like Half Dome, El Capitan, and Sentinel Dome. 

Today, we traveled 205 miles from Porterville California, through Kings Canyon and Seqouia National Parks, and on to Merced California. This brings the trip total to 2802 miles. Below is a map of the route from today.