The temperature began to drop as we ascended the "long and winding road" to the Giant Forrest in Sequoia National Park. We entered Giant Forrest and were in freak out mode with every glance out the car window. The trees were simply enormous! It felt like we had entered some magical elven forest straight out of lord of the rings. It took us over an our to make the climb to our campsite that was simply breathtaking. The huge treas and boulder lined sites really made one feel like you were right on the edge of the rugged and wild.
Ahh! Bear! Run!
The cold crisp air was a welcome change. It began to mist as we finished setting up camp and headed to the trail head for our first trek into the forest. We started with a hike to see the General Sherman Tree, the largest living single stem tree on earth by volume, and maybe the largest living thing period. From there we continued to hike through the forest passing numerous famous trees including the Lincoln, Washington, Senate Group, McKinley, and Arch. Several of the hollowed out trunks that we crawled inside were bigger than our two person tent. The scenery and atmosphere of the forest was beautiful and well worth hike the last half of the trail in pouring rain. We also encountered a bear moseying along between the trails who took no interest in the handful of hikers surrounding him.
Back at camp we battened down the hatches and prepared for rain as the sky remained gray and the cold kept getting colder. We managed to cook some macaroni on the camp stove while huddled under our umbrella. I slipped on all the cold weather gear I had and took cover in the tent and Jay took advantage of a short break in the weather to set up a tarp shelter over our kitchen. We shivered in our tent all afternoon with a few trips to the car to blast the heater for a warm up. Our camp was visited by four dear on their evening stroll.
Just as dinner rolled around the hail started pounding, so much so that Jay was deafened to my instructional shouts as he tried to cook dinner under the tarp shelter. He braved the freezing downpour and we had our dinner in bed of garlic and butter couscous. After nearly 48 hours of freezing cold precipitation I wasn't feeling like the tough, outdoorsy, seasoned camping girl that I usually play the role of. I was done. And when we woke up to heavy snowfall we decided to forgo our third night scheduled at Sequoia and head west for the beach and dryer weather. We shoved all of our wet gear in trash bags and made a run for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment