We spend most of the day at the Sequoia National Park. It was a gorgeous drive! From the foothills to the uppermost peaks was about 8000 feet up or a 2 hour twisting and turning road (if you don't stop). Needless to say, we didn't make it all the way up. We went up about halfway taking scenic stops along the way.
We found a beautiful trail up a ravine with melted snow making a creek down the middle. If we didn't have Nathan sleeping in the van, I would've liked to take the hike much farther than we did.
As we made our way up into the Sierra Mountain Range, we could feel the air gradually get cooler. We also started seeing more and more snow. Some of the side roads were still closed because they were still snow covered. As we made it up to the GIANT Forest, there was quite a bit of the white stuff.
Most of the snow was so compacted that we could walk right on top of it. Seth found a place where it he could stick his leg in. He wasn't sure if he was even touching the ground.
The Giant Forest was properly named because of the HUGE Sequoia Trees. They were sooo beautiful and they almost seemed unreal in their sizes. It looked like we were transported into an episode of some Star Wars movie...
Here is Gracie with her trees... THE THREE GRACES (as the three trees in the photo were named.) The three of them are supposedly all the same age and make a "graceful grouping".
GENERAL SHERMAN'S TREE
... and onto the main event... THE WORLD'S LARGEST TREE! It's hard to imagine that they've looked throughout the whole world and declared the largest tree to be right here in the middle of this forest, yet, looking at it's size, it's not hard to imagine that this IS the largest tree in the world (based on it's diameter- 36.5 feet). There is a (slightly) smaller tree somewhere in this park that has a hole big enough to drive through, but they informed us that unless we're able to drive through 6 feet of snow, we can't even get close to it.
We need a much bigger family to join hands 'round THIS tree...
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