What time is it there?!

Having travelled south we were now ready to start a hectic week of visiting some of the most spectacular scenery of our trip so far. We’ve also been very lucky with the weather, after some cloudy and rainy days on the northwest coast we are rewarded with clear sunny days for most of our time in the national parks.

The Sequoia Park guidebook takes great pride in explaining that the park is far less crowded than Yosemite. This turned out to be true, and for large parts of the day it felt like we had the place to ourselves.

The scale of the big parks started to become obvious today as well. The driveable road through Sequoia covers a small edge of the actual park area, and looks almost insignificant on the map. Once you start to plan your journey however you realise that it is 50 miles of quite windy road at an elevation of 6000ft!

The road through the park is known as The Generals Highway, so named because it links the General Grant and General Sherman trees, the latter being the largest living thing on the planet. As impressive as these individual trees are, it is the long parts of the journey when you are completely surrounded by Sequoias that are the most memorable.

Hopefully the photos will give some idea of the size of the trees, as it is difficult to convey the scale in a small picture (a problem which will return at the Grand Canyon!).