Close, But No General Sherman

We slept in until 8am which was such a luxury! Tom made his “artisan handcrafted” AeroPress coffee and after enjoying that, we geared up and left, hoping that today would be more gratifying than yesterday.

We checked the National Park’s website and the road closures were still in place. As we made our away up Hwy 180, we noticed that the road we intended to take to Sequoia was now closed.

At the entrance to Kings Canyon we asked about the closure and we were given an alternate route. We were only able to go to one grove of giants due to the closures in the park, but those were stunning.

We took the short walk around Grant Grove. Several of these trees have burn scars but survived past fires.

The size of these trees is hard to take in. Even when you put a human in front of them it still seems like the scale if off. You just have to see these giants for yourself.

As we were gearing up to get back on the bike there was a bus load of French tourists and it made us laugh that they wanted their picture taken with an F150 XTL 4×4! Guess they don’t have many of those in France.

We went a few more miles up the road into Sequoia National Park but turned around once we got to the recent burn area.

We saw a detour sign on our way back and decided to see where it led. Nowhere. It was a pretty road, though.

We stopped for lunch then followed the recommendation of the park staff – Hwy 63 which seemed like a long, straight, boring road. It was long and straight but really quite pretty with orange and olive groves.

We ended the day a half a mile from the entrance to Sequoia National Park which is closed on this end. So close! The town of Three Rivers is set along the raging Kaweah River.

We checked in and made dinner reservations at the lodge where we’re staying. It’s nothing fancy but the setting is beautiful and the people are really nice.

We were seated outside next to the river. Cathy noticed a Red Tail hawk fly into a tree and then noticed some baby hawks trying out their wings.