No. 10/60 — Sequoia National Park
I’m a big National Park junkie — I’ve loved going to them since around 2017 when my buddies and I road-tripped to Zion National Park (another blog for another day). As Sequoia was high on my bucket list, and one of the parks I most recently re-visited, I thought it best to write my first blog on it.
Sequoia National Park is located in the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range north of Bakersfield and east of Visalia, California. Sequoia was established as a National Park in 1890 making it the ‘second’ National Park in the United States (quotes because the original second national park was delisted so it doesn’t really count).
I personally have now been to Sequoia National Park twice. The first time my wife and I ventured out there I was dying to go, but was also sick and it was snowing in May (2019), so I’ll drop a picture or two from that trip, but largely all we did was the General Sherman circle and moved on. This blog is almost entirely about our most recent adventure of Sequoia/Kings Canyon a couple weeks ago in May 2021.
The Trees
It’d be ridiculous of me to write about Sequoia without talking about the amazing and beautiful Sequoia trees which reside in the area. Something that surprised me on my first visit was the elevation — you can’t see a Sequoia tree without first driving 6000-odd feet of elevation (lots of switchbacks — if a passenger in your adventure troupe gets motion sickness, have them drive or at least put them in the front — trust me). But once you get there, you see beautiful red, orange, and brown Sequoias, as wide as small houses and taller than Semi trucks stacked straight up. They’re truly a sight to see and fun to adventure around. If you’re really strapped for time or need accessibility, there is a General Sherman tree trail where you can see, of course, the General Sherman tree (the world’s largest tree by volume), as well as a few other Sequoias and the museum. As I was barely standing our first trip and there was a foot of snow up there, that was all we did.
The second trip we decided we would not even look at that area and attempted to do everything else we could in a day. We climbed the many stairs to Moro Rock, a popular overlooking dome where you get a good view of the Sierra Nevadas.
My favorite part of this was actually looking back — if you look closely you can see the fuzzy tops sticking out are the Sequoia trees.
We drove farther on the trail and saw the famous Tunnel Log — no pictures of us in it because it’s full of people taking 200 photos of themselves: the car from the front, car from the back, sunroof photos, etc. etc. etc. (luckily there’s a drive around so you don’t have to wait half an hour while tourists stay parked taking photos). Okay rant over about the tunnel log.
Next we did some exploring around and got some more pictures of different Sequoias — bunched together ones, fallen over ones. They put in lots of extra wide roads so pulling off and exploring was so easy and so many of them that it was never overcrowded.
Highlight — Lil’ Baldy
We did some more driving on the General’s Highway North and did the planned Lil’ Baldy trail. This was for sure the highlight of Sequoia for us. Lil’ Baldy is a dome 8000 feet up where you get this massive panoramic view of most of the park. It was a gorgeous 1.7-mile hike and we saw only 8 people max on the whole hike. No excessive stairs, railings or people like Moro Rock and, I would say, a far better view.
As we were doing both Sequoia and Kings Canyon in the same trip, we made the realization that it would be faster to drive up to the General Grant Grove area of Kings Canyon National Park and leave the parks that way for the night rather than making our way back through Sequoia, so Lil’ Baldy was the finale to our second trip to Sequoia.
Favorite?
I love this park. It’s beautiful and has so much to see and do. It’s not just a forest park with beautiful smells but a mountain park with tons of little hikes and some longer ones for the truly eager. It’s possibly my favorite but it’s in close running with Zion and Canyonlands.
What I would do next time
Tough to say — I hesitate to say Big Baldy only because it’s a longer hike and similar elevation to Lil’ Baldy, but it would certainly be fun. I would say Crystal Cave would be worth a shot (you have to get tickets/reservations), as well as Muir Grove/Lost Grove.
Next on the blog
The end of the first day and the second day of this most recent National Park adventure we visited Kings Canyon National Park, so naturally I will be covering it next.
