Ahh. It is always nice to have a long uninterrupted night’s rest after a wild night of no sleeping. Last night was such a welcome relief after the night prior of no sleeping in the Valley of Fire. Scott drove a looong time yesterday, but he managed to get us up into a higher elevation to cooler weather. It was the perfect temperature. It was cold enough that you could snuggle with your sleeping bag and not be too hot. We were positioned perfectly to see the sun rise and slowly greet us to another day.
Cows were everywhere down the road we camped off of. There was a campground three miles down the road, but “road” was a generous term for the rolling mounds of dirt. We were very tired from the wild night in the Valley of Fire and the long day of driving, so we only went a little bit down the road. One black cow ran with us most of the way to our campsite. The cows greeted us again in the morning. We were on a hunt for a park to cook up breakfast, but we didn’t see too many signs of formal recreation sites in the middle of the rolling fields. Scott pulled over on the road and cooked up some bacon and eggs. Only two cars passed us in the half hour we were there.
Sequoia National Forest
A large sequoia near the parking lot and the Sentinel across from one of the visitor’s centers we visited. Cody is showing us in the second picture how small we really are compared to these trees.
Visitor’s Center - learning about how to help save the parks with reduce, reuse, and recycle and not creating more air pollution. The picture on the right is illustrating fire damage on a sequoia. The sequoias are extremely tall because they are fast growing, their bark is resistant to insects and rot due to the tannins in their bark, and their thick fibrous bark insulates the trees from fire while their bark holds little sap making the bark less flammable.
The General Sherman is the largest tree in the world by volume. Some trees may be taller but skinner or larger in diameter but shorter. The General Sherman is 52,500 cubic feet in volume. The Sentinel Tree which is just about the same age is only 27,900 cubic feet in volume. Thus they can’t determine the age of these trees by size. The oldest tree in California is in the White Mountains and is 4,700 year old. We just barely missed the ranger talk on the General Sherman, but the ranger was happy to answer any questions we had. She said usually the most shocking fact people learn about the sequoias is that they have a very shallow root system. The roots spread out, but they are very shallow because just five feet below these trees is solid granite. Scott asked how they know how old the live trees are, as we know they use tree rings to determine the age of fallen trees. The answer is that they use a little of tree boring and then they compare that boring sample with other fallen trees. They wouldn’t want to bore all the way through a tree as that would be pretty damaging.
Due to their shallow root system the giant sequoias often die by falling over. “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” This tree may be here for my kid’s great great great grandkids to see. The same tannins that help keep sequoias alive by resisting rot and insects will keep this fallen tree here a long time.
After watching the video on bears we headed to get our seventh Junior Ranger badges for this trip. The bear video discussed what to do if you see a bear, some of the old park practices dealing with bears, and how they deal with bears now. Parks used to create a food dump as an arena for the bears and the park visitors would sit in bleachers and watch the bears eat their trash. This caused many of the bears to become aggressive towards each other and humans. Upwards of thirty bears were being euthanized after they became aggressive each year due to this practice. Things are better now, but there are still times when park visitors feed the bears and the bears have to be “hazed” into staying away from humans with rubber bullets or shouting. They may even need to be euthanized. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a little bit of a bear-phobia. Yet, I was the only one who was teary-eyed for the poor bears who just want to live in their home. I’m still not looking forward to a too-close encounter, but I can respect their need for space and for humans to treat them like wild animals and not zoo inhabitants. If humans aren’t careful that is the only place we will be able to see them. The middle picture above is of the kids on the bus on a super high seat. They just love the park shuttle busses. Cody was rocked to sleep in my lap on the shuttle bus out to the Sherman trail. It has been a long time since he has fallen asleep in my lap. During our Alaska trip three years ago he fell asleep in the backpack on my back almost every day.
The picture all the way to the right and above is a cross section from a tree that was cut down due to it’s potential risk of falling on some visitor cabins. They have since decided to move the visitor cabins and conveniences outside of the area where the sequoias are located. “No more centuries old big trees cut down due to itty bitty cabins,” the sign stated. This tree was 2,210 years old.and shows scars from eighty different fires. They have discovered that the trees actually grow faster in the years following a fire. They think this may be due to a lack of competition for resources.
This is the stream right across the little camp road from our campsite. The kids just played and played and played here.
The water running over the rocks was such a soothing sound. I just sat on a rock, soaked up the sun, and watched the kids play for a while.
We stayed at Lodgepole Campground In Sequoia National Park. We met some great camp neighbors: Courtney and Matt. They have two children who were ages 5 1/2 and 9 1/2. The kids created a “clubhouse” and jobs for their clubhouse. Brooke and Cody said some of the jobs were a lookout, rock collector for the sling shot, stick collector, boss, and helper. Guess who was the boss most of the time? Cody said he loved picking up rocks. The kids said their legs got really wet.
The dad, Matt, made me laugh. He was high energy and full of stories of adventures they have completed and adventures he has ambitions of accomplishing. He reminded me of Scott. I asked his wife Courtney how she handles her husband’s wild adventures, as Scott’s wild adventures have sent him to the hospital for the last two summers. She said he does what he wants when he wants and he is happy. Matt responded with, “No one looks back on their death bed and thinks of what they accomplished. They think of what they didn’t accomplish. My goal is to do it all, so there is nothing to look back on and think, ‘I wish I would have done that.’”
I have heard that same speech before. If Scott lived anywhere near Albuquerque I’m pretty sure I know who he’d be trying to set up mountain biking adventures with.
