Recently we were able to visit Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park which are right next to each other and are managed as one national park. We spent Monday night and Tuesday night in Azalea Campground which is in Kings Canyon then spent quite a few hours on Wednesday in Sequoia. The campground was nice although having a bathroom a little closer would have been nice. The weather was perfect with lows at about 50 degrees and highs in the low 70's. On Monday afternoon we did the Big Stump trail which features several very large stumps from the days when the sequoias were not protected and people were chopping them down.
This is the Mark Twain stump:
On Tuesday, we saw the General Grant tree which is the 3rd largest tree in the world. We also did an 8-mile hike to Mist Falls. Sequoias are especially good at surviving fires which helps them live a lot longer. General Grant survived a fire which did this to it:
Then we drove about an hour up Kings Canyon which has Kings River running through it. Then we did the big hike. The first part (and the last part) is pretty exposed and not as interesting. Then you get into the forest and it becomes much more shady and beautiful. The river is very rapid and turbulent and beautiful.
I really liked seeing this tiny little tree growing in the middle of the river on top of a rock. It seems like a very challenging place for a tree to grow!
We finally arrived the falls which we could have gotten closer to but we needed to turn around and get back.
On Wednesday morning, we broke camp and drove to the Sequoia National Park where we saw some more big sequoias and did a tour of the Crystal Cave.
The General Sherman tree is the largest in the world by volume. There was a long line of people to take pictures in front of the tree with the sign and they didn't want anyone else in their pictures (an argument broke out when someone tried to do this out of turn). We weren't interested in waiting in the line so we took our picture at a different angle.
And got a picture of some strangers by the sign:
Next up was our tour of Crystal Cave. If you have been on any number of cave tours, they all seem pretty similar. I told Scott I think I'm done with cave tours, personally.
This is a formation that looks kind of like Jabba the Hut when you first walk in.
After the tour, we walked up the long trail back to the parking lot and then spent what seemed like a really long time going down the long very windy road back to civilization. I enjoyed the park but it does require some driving to get there. Maybe that helps it be a little less crowded.
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