Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks

While staying in Visalia, CA we drove an hour to these two parks. Although they have separate names, they are actually one park and one can drive from one to the other. Located in the Sierra Nevada mountains in central CA, they are home to the giant Sequoia trees. Two of them, General Sherman and General Grant, are the two largest trees on earth. It is estimated that they are dispersisng seeds. These trees, in addition to being fire tolerant are also impervious to insects and disease. In fact,  most of them die from falling over due to a relatively shallow root system.

2 large sequoias

Stephen inside a dead sequoia

King's Canyon

2,200 years old! What makes them so majestic is their incredible width. While they are quite tall, the CA Redwood is taller. Most of them have scars from fires years past. The fires help the tree by forcing the cones, many of which are attached to the trees for 20 years,  (the size of a chicken's egg) open and

When viewing them, I felt like I was on another planet, for I had never seen any other tree that compared to them. They are quite massive, even in their upper structure. They grow amongst other conifers such as the redwood and the sugar maple, but they do exist in groves. They are easily identified by their red bark and size.

King's Canyon, in addition to Sequoia, also has sequoia groves. It is also one of the steepest canyons in the US. You can travel from the top of the canyon to the bottom, where you find the rapidly flowing South fork of the King's river. It is quite beautiful. It is also remarkable given the drought that is obvious throughout the countryside.

One other thing to mention--in this arid climate, you see miles of citrus, olive, and nut trees in the valleys below the Sierra Madres. I wonder how the farmers are able to pay to irrigate these fields given the current draught status?

Prescott, Phoenix and Tucson, AZ

As most of you know, we spent @ 2 months in AZ. When camping in Prescott we went RV shopping. Our RV was 7 years old and experiencing some problems. We had already replaced 2 axles, all tires, and now our convection oven broke. We found a lovely, new RV which we decided to purchase. Without going over the trials and tribulations experienced in getting our new loan, I will say that it took @7 weeks longer than we expected, but by the end of June, we left Prescott with our new 2016 42 foot Solitude fifth wheel.

While in AZ, we took several trips. We went to Phoenix to see two Frank Lloyd Wright homes and visited Tucson to see the Suguaro National Park, and my friend and colleague, Kathy Huebner. We also took a side trip to Tombstone to see the famous OK Coral and went to the Desert Museum as well.

Wright's home and school at Taliessen West

Wright's son's home

Tombstone

Tombstone cemetery--grave of man killed at OK Coral

Suguaro National Park

Page, Arizona

Page, a relatively small town in Northern AZ has some beautiful sights. While there we saw Lower Antelope Canyon, Horseshoe Bend, and took a raft trip on the Colorado River.

Lower Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon located on Navajo land. While the Upper Canyon is above ground, the lower canyon is visited by descending a crevice in the bleak Arizona landscape. It is longer than the upper canyon and provides some amazing views.

Horseshoe bend can be viewed by hiking 3/4 mile from a road stop about 1/2 mile from town. One looks down on the Colorado as it makes almost a 360 degree turn. We had the opportunity to see it the next day from a different vantage point. We took a rafting trip on the river and actually navigated around the bend.

Check out the pictures.

Horseshoe Bend

Antelope Canyon

Light shaft in Antelope Canyon

Rafting on the Colorado (1000 ft canyon walls)