Travels with Pops

SOME BIG-ASS TREES

We made it to the John Muir Lodge in Grant's Grove after a harrowing, hairy, nearly horrific drive through an inch of snow on the General's Highway through Sequoia. As I blatantly foreshadowed in previous posts, this drive of only about 45 miles took us up, up and away and nearly down, down, down, but not directly into a rock like that poor fool who was ahead of us who apparently also did not heed the warnings about tire chains. It was every man for himself, I tell ya (and someone else had already stopped to help him out) so we kept charging on into the night on a swervy, icy mountain road.

The ghosts of Ma Joad and John Muir were apparently watching over us.

John Muir Lodge is a tidy little joint. Very few outside lights, no TVs, clean and quiet. The kind of place I want my tax dollars spent on. I do not want my tax dollars to go to the joker who was supposed to fix our bedside lamp, though. We ended up looking at maps with our headlamps on while lying in bed. Kinda cozy, I'll admit, but at $120 a night, not something I expected to be doing.I mean there's roughing it, and then there's roughing it! My lovely Artemis and I have done our time in cabanas on the Mexican coast and in tents during Lake Michigan thunderstorms. If I have to pay $35 bucks for two burgers at the lodge restaurant, I want the lights in my room to work. I've grown soft in my old age.

So , we wake up in the morning on Ohio time, head over to the grove and find......nothing but trees!

We get one of the most visited parks on the planet all to ourselves!!:

Ok, there were two other people there, but they were quiet people, the best kind.

 

That's the General Grant tree, one of the top five largest creatures on planet Earth. 

I think this one is, too

Like the Grand Canyon, it's hard to take a bad picture, and it's hard to stop taking pictures.

Sequoias look like some sort of ride at Disneyworld. The impressive thing is that they maintain much of their original trunk width all the way up into the canopy.

The morning sun burned through the fog and caused some dramatic effects. They were not necessary, but we were grateful anyway:

We headed out on the North Loop Trail, and the rising mist looked like smoke from a wild fire.

We learned through looking that every single tree had a burn scar. Nearly half of the trunk mass of most trees had been consumed by some recent or ancient fire.

The really cool thing is that the bark of these trees is spongy and relatively soft. The biggest creatures on earth have the softest skin and bear the scars of fire. They are disease resistant and usually only die because they fall over. The fallen trees are resistant to decay as well, and can last for hundreds of years before disappearing into the earth. Very cool.

But sometimes they bite it like everything else:

They seemed to get bigger as we hiked:

Artemis pointing at a baby sequoia/sasquatch:

I'm sure this tree was famous but there were no signs and no people, and we were digging it:

 

Took a drive toward Hume Lake, since the road down into King's Canyon was still closed. Got blessed with a view down into King's Canyon and up into the high peaks of the Sierra backcountry.

This strange contrast set the tone for the coming contrast between the silence of of the Sequoias and the multitudes at Yosemite


The Final Word:

I can't believe it took me this long in my life to get up into real mountains. Now, of course, having tasted the constantly changing weather and remoteness of the distance, I feel the urge to go stomping way out there and up there, and I admire those people who are willing to explore this beautiful place on its own terms.