Passed a ton of orange farms on the way to the park
Snagged a couple that had fallen :)
Palm trees along the road
Made it!
This was a rock tunnel on a foot path, not for cars. I saw a deer right after this but wasn't able to stop to grab a pic.
Awesome shot with "God clouds" hah #Ben
Such pretty scenery
Love these layered mountains! I kinda like that the road is in this shot.
Lots of layers
Steep mountain
Layerrrrrrrsssss ahhhh
Fun fact: The word "sequoia" contains all 5 vowels :) [y doesn't count]
The black split areas on sequoias are scars from fires
A fallen sequoia in which a tunnel was bore (is that proper grammar?)
Tree tunnel! See the center of it on the left side?
General Sherman is the largest (by volume) tree ON EARTH!! Also kinda cool that my matriarchal genealogy has some Shermans in there somewhere!
General Sherman
Some smaller sequoias
General Sherman with some people in front for better scale. Trust me, it's big.
Not General Sherman, but how pretty is this one?
Cross-section of a sequoia
Check out that ant for a scale of the rings. This tree was >2,000 years old!
Playing with angles
Gives a little perspective
There were lots of holes in this bark, I believe from carpenter ants. Looked pretty cool. Sequoias have special bark that have tannins, making them somewhat fire-resistant. They also don't have much sap, so they are not nearly as flammable as most trees.
Fires generally happen towards the tops of mountains, so the uphill sides of sequoias get burned during fires. This is one of the reasons why sequoias tend to fall uphill. Also, while sequoias' roots are very long and extensive, they are extremely close to the surface of the ground and do not run very deep.
Super burned tree. It looked like there was wire mesh around it, but it's actually just the texture of the charred bark.
So red!
Mature red sequoias on the left, young sequoias on the right covered with chartreuse moss
I decided to have a photo shoot with this special sequoia!
Long, deep scar from a fire. Poor sequoia :(
Oh hai!
My armspan was tiny compared to the width of this guy!
Beautiful
I love you, sequoia!!
Dear sequoia, I wish I could climb you and hide in your top branches :)
Tree hugger :-D
If you look closely, you can see that it looks like two trees at the top, yet one tree at the bottom. That's because two sequoias grew so close together that they fused bases!!
Fallen sequoia in front of a pretty red one
Better view of the two trees that fused into one at the base
Driving through the forest
I can't get enough of these layered mountains!
More orange trees
WHOA look at all the oil rigs. This was north of Bakersfield, CA in an area called Oildale (surprise surprise). Seriously, click on the picture to zoom in, there are at least 15 of them just in this shot! Shouldn't gas be cheaper out here??!
Ok, so despite ending the day with oil rigs (and filling up the Pilot hah), I had an absolutely amazing time with the sequoias today :) I love having the chance to explore nature on this trip, and there are definitely wonderful things to see! Tomorrow I'll be back down around Los Angeles for a couple of days before heading to Phoenix. There probably won't be many pictures until after the weekend so I will wait to post again, but I think I've shared enough pictures the past couple of days to make up for it ;) Thanks for checkin in!
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