The largest trees in the world

I’ve learned a long time ago that unforeseen circumstances often occur when you are traveling, and that is one of the reasons why I no longer over plan any trip. When traveling independently, one should be able to quickly adapt. Of course this can sometimes be a bit stressful, especially if you do not speak the language of the country you are visiting. On our 16^th day of this road-trip, we had planned to visit some cities on our way to the Sequoia National Park, but what was supposed to be a 6 h drive, took a bit more than 9 h. This would become the longest car drive of our adventure through the American west.

I’ve visited Sequoia National Park before, during my round-the-world trip, but this time we were going to spend 2 nights in the park, which would allow us to properly explore the park and its many hiking trails. Going up the Sierra Nevada mountain range, I noticed that the mountains had a lot less trees and vegetation than I remembered. We would then find many burned sequoias, and then I recalled reading some news, a while ago, of wildfires in the park. Later that night, during the park rangers night talk, we learn that a huge number of millennial sequoias were burned in those wildfires, which is deeply sad.

After a very cold night, we drove to the far end of the Kings Canyon National Park, a 100 km drive that took us almost 3 hours to reach. The drive was great, with amazing mountain scenery along the way. Although this was going to be the 4th canyon to visit during this round-trip, it was still a very different experience, as most of the drive, once we entered the park, followed the small river at the bottom of the canyon. When we reached the Zumwalk meadows trail, one of the hotspots for wildlife, we were a bit disappointed to learn that, again due to flooding, the trail was only partially available, and we could not venture further into the wild. Still, the trail lies on a very beautiful landscape, with mountain tops on the background and clean translucent rivers right below your feet. This was a great place for lunch, right before we returned to Sequoia.

On our way back, right before exiting Kings Canyon Park, we had the most amazing bear sigh of the trip. This looked like a young black bear, more curious than afraid, that we found just a few meters down the road. The highlight of this encounter was when the bear noticed us and instead of leaving, climbed a tree. I could not believe my eyes… After standing for a few minutes in the middle of the tree, looking at us, he climbed further and started eating leaves from the tree. A really cool experience…Our day ended with two hikes in the heart of Sequoia National park, where the mature sequoias are near accessible trails. This would be the last natural park we were going to visit during this road-trip, and on the following morning we descended our way in the direction of the Pacific, for a more urban experience on coastal California… (to be continued).