16 June – Lodgepole – Bakersfield

We spent the morning hiking and enjoying the sequoias. Just stunning! They are related to the Redwoods, but instead of growing tall and tapered, they grow big round the trunks. The really old ones are like clubs with the head end in the ground. They still get pretty tall, but get rounder every year. 

 

 We saw the biggest tree in the world by volume – the General Sherman – and it puts on enough growth every year to equal 60 normal trees (your average pine tree size).

The General Sherman's "Footprint"

We walked the Congress Trail, winding through the sequoia groves. We saw 5 groves and there are only 70 in the Sierra mountains (and in the world). It was quite something to see these huge trees, thousands of years old and realise that they are so rare. That is it, no others anywhere. 

The sequoias are amazing trees, like the redwoods they are pretty well impervious to fire, insects, fungus etc and the only thing that really kills them is being blown over. Being very fast growing and very long lived, they get really, really big.

Even when they are burnt out by fires they seem to regenerate and regrow. 

Looking up the trunks is odd, they don’t taper off as they get taller, they just seem to stop at the top.  Like they have been chopped off. 

We saw an Asian family on the trail and the kid (maybe 10 years old) was carrying an ipad. Yep. Playing a computer game while he walked! Seriously! Leaving the mountains we drove down the 7500 feet into smog. On the way in we thought it was dust from the farming activities, but at the visitor centre we saw an exhibit on how the smog is damaging the forests from acid rain. The smog from LA flows into the valley and when it is thick enough it even impacts the mountains directly. Lovely stuff. 

We went back via “cat pole” and the poor thing was still up there. Lunch in Vasalia then onto the 99 South for Bakersfield. Drive to Vegas tomorrow. It is soooo hot we have decided to avoid Death Valley and take the highway.