Kings Canyon National Park - Part 1

We are a glutton for punishment when it comes to elevation challenges.  We drove to Kings Canyon National Park yesterday to see the sights.  Again, started out at the campground around 700 feet elevation and spent a big portion of the day at over 9000 feet.  Did not do a lot of physical activity for a couple of reasons - we started out in the park with sunny skies but as soon as we started driving into the canyon, a thunderstorm came through.  What a cool thing was that?  To hear the roar and see the lightning across the huge expanse!  Awesome.  And of course, see the snow falling at the upper reaches of the mountains and have rain fall on us.  Really neat experience.

The greenness - makes me miss Ohio 

Twisty road

Weight limit on bridges - could have never brought the RV up this road

Goal - to be up and over that mountain in distance

We had a couple options to get to Kings Canyon.  First was to drive through Sequoia NP and drive along the scenic parkway that links the two parks together.  Second was to take a shorter route outside the park, following the mountains up and down, very twisty road but was told very pretty and then join up into Kings Canyon entrance way.  Third was to take the more straighter route but took same amount of time and this route follows a more gently sloping road along the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and then again joining up at the entrance way.  We chose option 2 - and what an amazing ride that was.  Very very narrow, in and out of the Sequoia National Forest, past ranches and small homes, but oh so green and lush.  Many cows lounging right by the fence of the road, did see evidence of past fires.

Ranches right along road

I could live there!

Hello, cows.  Moo.

Once we got into the park we went to the visitors center to get acclimated.  Still sunny, chilly 43 but doable, did see patches of snow left.  Two of the visitors centers along the park road are still not open - in next 2 weeks they should be ready for the summer.  A short distance from the center is the Grant Cove Area where the General Grant Sequoia tree is.  As we were driving to it, saw a group of deer, still had a lot of their winter coat on - shedding.

On the road just 30 seconds before

The General Grant tree is the third largest of all trees in the world (1 and 2 are in Sequoia and we will visit them another day).  Walked the trail, saw some amazing trees that are over 1500 years old.

So - this is what snow looks like!  LOL

General Grant Tree

A felled tree - see man to right inside?  Yep, that big.

See woman bottom right?

So tall that you have to be really far away to capture it

Tree after tree - amazing

From there we decided to drive down into the canyon and see what there was to see. Once we left the Grant Grove area and headed towards the canyon, we saw the remnants of the Rough Fire, the largest wildfire of 2015.  Once side of the road was green, the other burned out.  The road was buckled and repaired, we could see the damage of the fire and smelled it.

From the fire.  Uh oh, is that rain ahead?