Sequoia National Park

 On Thursday we left Yosemite and went to Sequoia National Park.

It was cool seeing the trees in Yosmite but they were all over the place here and it was awesome.

We got there late in the day so we only got to set up the camp and get dinner going before we warmed up in our sleeping bags.

It was way cold.

The next day we saw a little bit of blue sky and insisted on getting out in it under the trees.

We got in the car and low and behold there are more bears.

There was another mama bear and her two yearling cubs.

It was another amazing experience.

After they left we headed up to the trail to see the General Sherman Tree, the largest tree in the world.

It made the memory of the Grizzly Giant pale in comparison.

Now when I saw largest I mean by volume.

The red woods are taller, the bristle cones are older and the cypress and baobab are wider.

But with a height of 275 feet, a diameter of 25 feet, and an estimated bole volume of 52,513 cubic feet that makes it the largest.

It its also estimated at being between 2,300 to 2,500 years old.

Holy Cow!

It was awesome to see.

We learned some pretty cool things about bears and sequoia tress while visiting the visitor center too.

Did you know that if bears eat human food it messes up there way of life and makes them even more dangerous then they already are?

It's not just humans feeding them but it's also us leaving our food out and around that causes the longer term problems.

Pretty heavy stuff.

And did you know that Sequoia trees along with other trees require fire to help them grow?

The fire clears the brush and other plant life that starve it from the nutrients it needs and also take the much needed sun light.

The sequoia pine cones, which are incredibly small, also need the fire to make it bring the perfect tempiture so they open and drop the seeds in the perfect fire created soil.

For decades the Park Service was preventing any fire that threatened.

After years and years of the trees not seeming to do as well or spread they looked into the cause.

They found while looking into a cross section of a fallen tree that it shows fires touching the tree every 10 to 15 years.

Considering how old the trees are and all those fires touching it and not killing it they started the research that we now go by.

The Park Service now creates and controls fires to help these massive trees stay alive and helps them to continue to spread.

I find this fascinating.

These pictures from a hike that Mark went on by himself.

I was way tired from all the walking from earlier that day and I know we would have to hold Scott most of the time.

It was also incredibly cold and rainy.

Mark did get a bit of rain on his hike but this made the river/water fall even better so he didn't mind too much.

I love him taking pictures, He takes great ones and it feels like I was there, sorta.

It was a beautiful place to be.

I again suggest going in the late spring summer time though, it's really high up and pretty dang cold.

As you can tell from the top right picture there was still snow on the ground.