Our second full day of national parks, and we decided to focus on the other one, the less well-known and less visited one. Conrad mapped out a loop that would take us up and around and then back down the way we had driven the day before, and we set off
on a back road through arid California countryside.
Destination: Kings Canyon National Park.
Full disclosure: we didn't make it to Kings Canyon itself. The national park sets in two parts. A smaller part is appended to the northwest of Sequoia National Park, and the canyon and the larger part of the park is north of Sequoia. The wet winter, though, had severe impact on many roads in the state, and it seems that the drive east into Kings Canyon is not yet open. It would have been an ambitious drive, perhaps, especially given our relatively late start, but I am sorry we missed seeing it.
Just the same, though, we had a good drive and a very interesting stop. A short drive into the park boundary, there is a picnic area near trails that lead to sequoia stumps. We wolfed down sandwiches and then set out to be impressed.
It's kind of awful that something that is all about destruction should be so fascinating and even beautiful. In the late 1800s, timbering activities in the area felled some of the giants, and the stumps remain as testimony to that time. And oh, what stumps. HUGE!
In some of these photos, you'll see us beside or on them, and I hope that gives a sense of just how massive the remains are. The trees must have been enormous. The ones that are still there are young and huge, but perhaps not as large?
There was also a little bit of historical information that we could learn from, happily.
I'm guessing that the meadows we encountered were the result of clearing out the trees.
A few lush green patches, wildflowers in abundance still.
There was something very idyllic about it all that made it easy to look past the tragedy of the fallen trees. It was altogether very thought-provoking, and I found I appreciated the visit to this park more than I did the one to Sequoia. What was even better, though, was that there were so few people there. Plenty of them at the visitor center area, for sure, but as we walked through the woods on the trails, we encountered perhaps a dozen people in total. That was a real pleasure, the three of us enjoying our meander in tranquility.
And then it was in the car, back through Sequoia, and on to the hotel to shower and change for dinner, souvenirs (from the store, not the forest!) in hand, another national park visited.
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