Great Sequoia National Park

A few weeks back (Memorial Day weekend to be exact) I took a trip out to San Jose, CA to visit my little brother. The voyage was to not only see what his life has been like at school (Santa Clara University), but to also take a trek off to some of the great California parks... namely Great Sequoia National Park.


The trip started with the most idle-rific/dawdle-ful departure ever...and for the trip planning was kept to a minimum (including, but not limited to, forgetting utensils and containers to drink from). So off my brothers' friends and I went... We made it to the park late at night and witnessed the grandeur of the park through headlights and extremely winding roads. We showed up at our campsite to find that it was covered in snow!


Remember me saying, "...planning kept to a minimum." I really had no clothes or shoes that would keep me too warm past 40 *F. Unfortunately it was about 25 out, and I was very ill prepared.... and I will likely not be making a similar mistake again in the future.


Our first full day there, we were able to get a hike in and see another part of the world (or so it seemed). We hiked through Kings Canyon National Park and went to see Misty Falls. Lots of rocks and interesting formations.

King's Canyon

Some more pictures of the hike

A bit of the canyon. Picture taken with Canon AE-1 (see previous post regarding issues with that camera).

That evening I got the opportunity to test out and sleep in an awesome hammock that Kate got me for my birthday. Now you may have asked yourself where I slept the night before. Well remember when I had said planning was kept to a minimum? The night before, I had attempted sleeping in the hammock , but got snowed on and consequently joined my brother and his 3 friends to make a 3-4 person tent extra cozy with a 5th person.

The hammock with my sleeping bag

During my brief attempt at the hammock the night before, I learned that I was going to need a rain fly for overhead protection, and an air mattress to try and keep my butt from freezing.

View from inside the bag with a makeshift rainfly

 Even with a cozy sleeping bag and air mattress, it was still quite chilly.

More gadgetry of mine - Note temperature was cooler than the watch shows

The picture of the watch obviously shows the altitude and temperature. But to get the temperature, I set the watch on the ground and it read 26, but by the time I had it on my wrist and then thought to grab my camera, my wrist had heated up the watch temperature gauge a bit.


The next day, our group visited Sequoia NP and got to see some awesome trees. The trees are really quite fascinating:

• they require fires to reproduce
  
• when a sequoia dies, it allows more sunlight through the canopy thus allowing younger trees to grow
  
• the roots of a sequoia aren't very deep, so they blow over easily
  
• the bark of sequoias are a natural flame retardant
  

Base of a giant sequoia

And I got a chance to be right next to one

Size comparison

 We also got a chance to see some bears up pretty close!

Really awesome creatures, worthy of some respect too.

So that was most of the trip. A lot of fun. I also got to hang out with Cisco and see his campus and play super smash bros, which was also great.


With that, I leave you with some more pictures.

View of some valley in California

Picture of lake in California - similar picture taken by me with filmed camera in other post

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*The pictures with the nice shots were taken by my little brother and his camera. The three of the hammock and watch are from my phone, while the B&W unclear shot is from the Canon SLR.