Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks are our next stop. The parks abut one another in Northern California in the southern portion of the Sierra Nevadas. Sequoia National Park is home to groves of enormous towering sequoia trees – the largest trees on earth. And Kings Canyon is one of the deepest canyon’s in North America.
We have an overnight stop in Stockton, California, on our way to the parks. We stay at the RiverPoint Landing Marina Resort at Buckley Cove. Our camp spot is lovely, where we see enormous freighters pass by. We have dinner at Mezzo, an upscale Italian restaurant nearby. It is delicious, we haven’t enjoyed an Italian restaurant in a while, even though it’s one of our favorites.
Then we are off to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Well, in actuality, we are off to Visalia, California, about 45 minutes from the park. We were originally slated to camp in the park at Dorst Creek Campground, right in the park, but the weather is predicted to be extremely hot and camping with no hook-ups means no air conditioning, so we moved our reservations to the KOA in Visalia, California. It’s always a tradeoff – we love the beauty, views and proximity of campgrounds in the National Parks but life is easier with full hook-ups – we can use our air conditioning, microwave and take daily hot showers. With no hook-ups, we have to monitor the battery and tanks, limit showers and have to occasionally haul the generators out. We opt for easy comfort at this stop.
So after a travel day it’s time to go to the parks. Sequoia National Park is about a 45-minute drive. It is a scenic drive. The outskirts of Visalia are filled with fields and fields of citrus orchards. Rows and rows of bright green trees, dotted with fruit. Then the landscape suddenly changes to brown and golden yellow foothills.
We arrive at the Foothills Visitor Center and have to decide if we want to tour the Crystal Caves or see the trees. We realize we really don’t have time to see both – we probably should have slated more time for this park. We opt to skip the caves this trip – we have been to Jewel Cave, Wind Cave and are headed to Lehman Cave at Great Basin National Park, not to mention future parks include Carlsbad Caverns and Mammoth Cave. We want to see the trees! So we jump in the truck to drive the 33-mile scenic Generals Highway.
We stop at Tunnel Rock, a rock with a tunnel-like opening, and Hospital Rock, which features Native American pictographs and mortero rock holes used for grinding seeds. Then our red truck climbs up, up, up the mountain. Finally, we level among the beautiful giant trees. We park at the Giant Forest area to have a picnic lunch. The picnic area is heavily signed with bear warnings not to abandon your food. We eat our cheese, crackers, apples and chocolate, expecting at any moment to be joined by an uninvited guest… but no bears appeared!
Next, we take the shuttle to Morro Rock, as it says parking is limited. The bus winds up among the giant trees and drops us at the bottom of the climb. It’s a steep dramatic 400 step climb up the summit rock for stunning views of the surrounding area.
Then we continue on the scenic Generals Highway to the parking lot for the General Sherman Tree, among many other giant sequoias. It’s a beautiful, paved (but hilly!) walk through the forest to the General Sherman Tree – a giant sequoia, truly huge. It was so big and so tall it was hard to get a good photograph of it. Then we walk the path back up among the trees to the parking lot, but at 7,000 feet it takes a bit more effort than expected. We can definitely feel the effects of the altitude.
Then we continue along the scenic road out of the park. We have a choice of two roads back to Visalia. We choose to take Rte. 245 via the small village of Badger. It turns out to be a long, curvy drive down back down from 6,600 feet to almost sea level. Very curvy – it is the most never-ending curvy road that we have ever been on! With such tight turns, the truck can barely go faster than 20mph and it seems as if we will never reach the end of the descent back into civilization. We arrive home in Visalia late and go out to dinner for some very mediocre Mexican food.
The next day we have to get the oil changed on the Ford, and it requires new tires. And we need to grocery stop and restock at Walmart. And we have to do laundry. We have to sacrifice a day in the parks. It’s not all vacation when we travel – life intrudes!
The final day of our stop here is devoted to Kings Canyon National Park. We do not have an early start, however, because we have to drop the Airstream off for an air conditioning repair mid-morning, and we have to pick it back up by 5pm! We really wish we had scheduled more time here. When we drive into the park everyone is hungry, and since we forgot to pack our usual picnic of cheese, crackers, fruits and nuts, we have an early lunch at the restaurant at Grant Grove Village. The restaurant is fairly empty but service is excruciatingly slow. It is a mistake to eat here, as it eats up our precious time in the park. But at least everyone is fed.
We finally get on our way and drive into the canyon on the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway. The Canyon is spectacular – one of the deepest. We wind down, down, down into the canyon. The road drops 2700 feet to the South Fork Kings River. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to go all the way to the bottom to the Cedar Grove area of the park, where there is a waterfall, several hikes including one on that crosses the river on a suspension bridge, and views of massive granite walls that rival those of Yosemite. We only drive about halfway down, but we still have spectacular vistas of the deep canyon from Yucca Point. We slate this on parks to return to someday.
