Well, its that time of year once again; time to load up the RV and hit the road.
This summer we’ll be staying in California, exploring the central part of the state from Yosemite to Monterey, with quite a few stops in between.
On June 1st, we left Palm Springs for our first destination, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. The two parks are distinct but are administered as one and are connected by road to each other. Together, they extend over 1350 square miles, much of which is high altitude wilderness and largely inaccessible. Our intention was to do a kind of “drive through” visit over 3 days, just to get a sense of the place and decide if we would like to return at another time.
First we visited Sequoia National Park, the entrance to which was closest to our RV Park. While it was certainly lovely, from my point of view it was somewhat lacking in drama. The park is dedicated to preserving multiple groves of mature sequoia trees, which are among the largest living things on earth. In fact, the most significant attraction within the park is a tree, named General Sherman, which is said to be the world’s largest living tree and is believed to be over 2000 years old.
I had eagerly anticipated visiting Kings Canyon National Park, which is just north of Sequoia, and boasts of a scenic drive that climbs high into the Sierra Nevada mountains before descending into a canyon even deeper than the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, when we arrived in the area, we discovered that the road in question was still closed due to snow and would remain so until mid-June. Our plans thwarted, we decided to cut our visit short by a day and move on to our next destination, Yosemite National Park.
Wow, still closed due to snow. Not a concept I can get my head around in the SC Lowcountry!