The First Likeness to Home: Sequoia Trees

by Alex

It’s kind of a dream to be here.

The largest tree (by volume) in the world.

The largest tree.

The LARGEST TREE!!!!

I had always hoped to visit Sequoia NP but never knew if it would happen. This journey back home provided the perfect opportunity. The abundance of trees and many coniferous ones made me feel we were certainly getting closer to the northwest.

Hint: look at all the tree photos and see if you can find the people (for scale!).

The 4 most common trees in SNP: cedar, sequoia, white pine, sugar pine.
This visual was fascinating to me- I had no idea how the shape of a sequoia changes over its lifetime.

But before we got to Sequoia NP (after Joshua Tree) we stopped for a quick two nights in LA to see good friends from Seattle.

Lots of beautiful citrus groves along the way.
Hard to believe so much grows just alongside the road.
The “light traffic” and 8 lanes of cars we experienced were certainly intimidating.

Regan and Rick are amazingly interesting and kind people. Regan is actually the curator at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum (insane occurrence- oil and tar just bubbling up in the center of LA and swallowing animals whole-millions of years ago).

Regan wowing the girls.
Tar pits right in downtown LA!
Huge boxes of fossilized tar are removed from the pits.
Then slowly chiseled out to reveal incredible amounts of fossilized material. All smushed together onto itself.
This photo should be our Christmas card this year!

And Rick has done some top notch research about fossilized teeth- so indicative of changing environmental conditions! It was hard to leave them.

We got to spend lots of time with their dog Cassie, the chillest and sweetest pup there is!
We also got to see our friend Ricky!

Todd took the city opportunity to buy and install our new heater. After a dissection of the old one (the fan blades were melted!) he knew he had to start over with a new heater. The new one works!!

The girls took advantage of a slow morning.
The best games are ones they create themselves. Todd did help with the posts, but the girls drove the stakes in themselves!
Victorious Todd!!!

After LA we made it to Sequoia NP. The trails were many but we stuck to the short 1 mile interpretative trails. Just trying to absorb the grandeur of these monsters.

To me sequoias look like stands of broccoli.

I think the girls are able to grasp some of the scale when we walk through the trees or stand right up to their “stump stages”.

Try to surround the tree, keep stretching your arms!
I found the curved “chimneys” very interesting on this sequoia bark.
Can you spot the child?
Some sequoia trees are so big you can quite literally walk through the inside- and they were used for shelter.
The Mark Twain tree stump that made a perfect “stage” for performances.

We took 3 nights in Sequoia and Kings Canyon before heading to Fresno…to refill our cooking fuel-we somehow managed to empty our propane tank….is there a leak?

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National Parks sequoia trees

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