Sequoia`s Big Trees

We drove the snaky road with our Beast to Sequoia National Park after sunset, and the road felt narrow and the cliffs steep and too close! We reached the RV park in the National Park, paid our fee at the station, by leaving your name and the money in a little brown envelope( trust people…no one checking on you), ready for the Big Trees tomorrow! Next to our campsite we saw these huge steel lockers and bins, with scary warning signs about Big Bears! ‘Ha Ha!’ we thought.

After a wishy washy evening in the RV, when we only found some cold water in the restrooms, we slept well, to wake up to the only wild life in the Park, mule deer and grey squirrels. After coffee, we did the big dump at the dump station, making sure our Beast is a little lighter for the slippery snow! The Beast was behaving beautifully around all the sharp curves. No RV`s bigger than 22 ft were allowed past Hospital Rock. We just made it with our 21 ft, but trust me we still felt too big around certain corners! What we didn`t know, was that roadworks were laying ahead of us, and trying too squeeze through as thinly as possible gave us a couple of nervous moments. The beast was climbing the steep mountains.

It is so sad to think that these unbelievable beautiful trees were chopped down for pencils and grape stakes, until a man, John Muir walked among them coincidently looking for his cattle and realized that something has to be done to save these creatures.

We drove while the snow was falling, enveloping us in a new spooky world with magic all around us. It was just us, our Beast and these huge Giants keeping an eye.

I wish I could describe these trees to you, and I hope the photos will do a better job. Joe climbed into one of them totally disappearing.

We saw them scarred by fires and felt the pain they must have suffered, but then we learnt that they needed the fire to help their seeds propagate into new little trees. Even if they fell down, they are protected by tannins to keep them laying down for hundreds of years before they will allow an animal or fungi to feast on them.

We got lost on the trails, because we wanted to, we couldn`t stop loving it among the white of the snow and the overpowering wonderfulness of the trees.

I circled the General Sherman Tree, the largest living tree in the world! It weighs approximately 2,7 million tons and is believed to be 2 100 years old! Three times I circled this miracle, once for our Universe, second for all the people who touched my life and whom I touched, and the third time for my dearest friends and my wonderful family and my five children and my Johan….

We left a little piece of ourselves among these magical Giants, driving to Oakhurst, and slept next to the river, Fresno, in the High Sierra RV Park, with no hot showers! At least I had the heat of the trees filling my spirit still….