Walk With The Giants

Today we walked with the giants.  Sequoias are majestic, prehistoric, jaw-dropping, splendid, beautiful, towering, grand, and there just aren’t enough adjectives to describe them aptly.  And of course, pictures don’t do them justice.

Just smelling the sequoias...

Can you see my tiny little termite walking on that log?

This morning we headed straight out to the trails.  We started with the General Sherman trail, which led us to the (wait for it) General Sherman tree.  From there we hiked the Congress trail.  This was a long one, but it paid off.  Thank goodness for the absolutely perfect weather.  The high today was 68 degrees.  We were tired and hungry when done.

Next we drove to a picnic area to rest and eat our lunch.  After we ate, the girls worked on their Junior Ranger pamphlets.  Sarah Ellen came running over saying, “I just saw a bear!”  We have learned to trust this child with her eagle eyes and hound-like nose.  Sure enough, a bear had gotten into someone’s lunch.  The park is very thorough on educating everyone about the importance of keeping bears from your food.  You can’t even leave food in your car at night because they will bust through the windows.  If the bears get too comfortable around people, they become risks and may have to be put down.  Sadly, this bear was not too worried about us humans.  He wandered around sniffing out what he could.  One woman came over to shoo him away (she was pretty darn brave).  The bear was scared but didn’t leave.  We informed the ranger of this so they could check out the situation.

After that excitement, we headed over to the Giant Forest Museum to get the girls’ Junior Ranger badges.  From there we hiked the Big Trees Trail.  This trail was very peaceful as it surrounded an open meadow and allowed for great views of the giant trees.  While walking, we spotted several bears feeding in the meadow.  One cub was about twenty feet from us.

The girls were loving the wildlife while momma was constantly reminding them to be cautious.  Ironically, my fearful child doesn’t have too many fears when out in nature.  Lily loves the animals, wants to climb the highest things, and begs to crawl through huge, hollowed-out, dark logs.  Be careful what you wish for, right?

Our last hike was to Moro Rock.  This was a ¼ mile trail that was 400 steps straight up to the top a large granite dome.  From here, you have an unparalleled view of the Western Divide and many canyons.  Sarah Ellen and I made it half way up and decided the views were good enough for us.  James and Lily kept on to the very top!

This is the view Sarah Ellen and I settled on.

On the way back, we drove through Tunnel Log.

This guy was waiting on us when we got back to our room!

My pedometer tells me we walked 6.5 miles today and my body believes it.  We ate dinner at the lodge tonight then started planning our drive for tomorrow.  As we don’t have internet, we had to do it the old fashioned way – maps.  We will most definitely be checking the GPS as soon as we get a signal.