I'm baaaaack...
Well, I have returned from my trip in the Sequoias! Yipee!
There are lots of trees, and mosquitos, and squirrels, and mosquitos, and birds, and mosquitos, and chipmunks, and mosquitos, and bears, and mosquitos, and deer, and mosquitos, and so on...oh, and mosquitos! 🙄
Sequoia trees are really, really big. Up to 260 feet tall and are very wide at the base! 😱 And there are a lot of Sequoia trees that they've given titles to. The General Sherman and General Grant are two, named after...US generals I guess. And there are two fallen Sequoia trees that have become tourist attractions. The Tunnel Log has a big piece of it missing, so that cars can drive through. It fell right on the road and it takes too long to cut through one, so they cut a big hole in it. The Auto Log became a fallen Sequoia tree that cars could drive on, but was closed when they cleaned up a place called Giant Forest in the park.
There are tons more Sequoia trees with names, and here are most of them, that I know anyway: the Sentinel, the Senate (a group), the House (a group), the President, the Washington, the Lincoln, the McKinley, the General Sherman, the General Grant, Tunnel Log (fallen Sequoia), Auto Log (fallen Sequoia), Burnt Monarch (a burned Sequoia), Fallen Monarch (fallen Sequoia), Fallen Giant (fallen Sequoia), and the Butress (fallen Sequoia). All of the trees with names are of record size.
Sequoias are very thick too. The General Sherman is so thick, that if it was growing in the middle of an Los Angeles freeway, it would block three lanes of traffic! 😱
A spot in the Sequoia National Park/Forest is the Giant Forest. It used to be a place where people would camp and/or sleep in cabins. Tons of Giant Sequoias grow there, around a place called Round Meadow (hmm, why's it called that I wonder? 🙄 ). People had been camping there since 1890 (when the park/forest was made a national park/forest) and it was damaging the trees. Here are some reasons why:
1) destroyed plants
2) never-ending smoke from camp fires damaged trees
3) bears got into trash cans and messed up their food diet
4) fires are needed to cause Sequoia seeds to be planted, and fires were prevented to protect campers
For those reasons and many others, they took down EVERY single cabin, and the market/bar, and the hotel. In 1999 they removed the last building. Then they built a museum (if I didn't know any better, they could have just used the market building; it's the same design and size!) all about the Giant Forest. From there you can hike around Round Meadow, to Crecent Meadow (there's fallen logs that you can walk across the meadow on, fallen Sequoias), Tharp's Log (a 150 year old cabin made from a log by Mr. Tharp who wanted to live in the wilderness for awhile, and he died in 1912 in Three Rivers, California after the park opened in 1890, turning his cabin into a tourist attraction), Heather Lake (an 8 mile hike up to a beautiful lake; the hike sucks though), Mt. Whitney (a 71 mile hike up to the peak of the big mountain), and the John Muir trail (a hike that takes 2 weeks to finish!). Of course, I only went to Tharp's Log and the two meadows, because I'm way to lazy to do extremely long trails! 😂
Anyway, I'M BAAAAAAACK! Muahahahaha!!! 😈 😂