Kings Canyon National Park

We left Whitewater and traveled north to our next stop.  Along the way we stopped at a huge resevoir for lunch.  While we were eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, the most disturbing thing happened.  Half of one of my molars was gone - I'm talking a craggy crater in the back of my mouth and we're traveling and won't be home for another two weeks!  How is it that Tom can eat an entire BJ's size bag of tootsie rolls and not lose a single filling and I lose half a tooth eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich???  Where's the justice ...

Many thoughts run through my mind as my tongue is surveying the damage.  Do you just do a google search for a dentist?  Can this be fixed quickly?  I don't want to spend any vacation time at the dentist!  After assessing the situation ... it didn't hurt ... it was pretty sharp ... lets wait and see what happens.  More on the half molar later.  I did not finish the rest of my sandwich.
 The ride was beautiful!  Orange poppies and purple lupine grew on some of the hillsides.

Some of the hillsides in the lower elevations were covered with poppies and other spots has purple lupines - just beautiful!

We decided to head right to King's Canyon, we were anxious to see the trees.  The weather forecast was calling for rain starting around noon and changing to snow in the higher elevations.  Accumulating snow in the mountains overnight, ending in the morning.  YIKES!

From the valley you could see snow on the peaks.

  In winter, several areas in Kings Canyon and Sequoia are closed until the snow melts - mid-March.  When snow falls in the higher elevations of Kings Canyon and Sequoia, the roads that are open require chains.  Many places rent them - its a way of life in the mountains.  Having just made it through an upstate New York winter without snow, we did not want to drive in the kind of snow that requires chains.  Four-wheel drive is one thing, chains is another.

We made it to the trees just in time.  As we were about half-way through the trail it started to snow.

Giant Sequoia

The Giant sequoia species has five major requirements for continued survival:  sunlight, soil, water, air and fire.  Fire creates openings in the forest canopy through which sunlight reaches the forest floor.  These trees are fertilized by the ashes, rich in mineral salts that dissolve in water and are easily absorbed by plant roots.  Fire sterilizes the soil, killing insects, fungi, and other disease organisms.  Heat from fires causes sequoia cones to dry out and scatter seeds.  

Sequoia pine cone - about the size of a chicken egg!

Lunch stop - raining - seek shelter in the back of the car.

Seedlings grow rapidly, they can sometimes shoot up at a rate exceeding three feet in a year.  Mature giant sequoias reach an average height of about 250 feet.  As the trees grow, low branches die from lack of sunlight and fall to the ground.  Over the centuries, fires resulting from lightning have burned near the base of the trees, leaving scars that interrupt the transport of water and minerals to the top.

A vertical panorama - so I could fit the whole tree in the picture!

General Grant Tree
Named for the leader of Union forces during the Civil War, the world's third-largest tree and has the greatest base diameter of any sequoias at 40.3 feet.  This is 3.5 feet more than the diameter of the world's largest tree, General Sherman, in Sequoia National Park (we see him tomorrow).

General Grant is as tall as a 27 story building.  Wider at the base than a three-lane freeway and weighs more than 700 large cars.  If the wood were strong enough for construction, more than 40 average sized, 5-room houses could be built from it.  A relatively young tree for a huge sequoia, it has lived for nearly twenty centuries.

We stopped at the ranger station and got the low down on seeing the trees in Sequoia.  The ranger suggested doing a hike in the foot hills area in the morning and hope that would give enough time for the snow to melt and the chain restriction to be lifted - Sounds like a plan!

Time to head to our new location for the next few days.  But first, a stop at the drug store to see what they have in the dental area.  We actually found some sort of temporary filling concoction that you stick in your tooth - perfect!  Tom played herbie the dentist and got me fixed up!

Sanger, just outside Fresno.  Lots of farm land!  Cows, fruit trees, nut trees, avacados, olive groves, grapes.  They have a blossom trail you can drive in the spring, then it changes to a fruit trail.  

The gate to the farm.
 

 A cottage on the farm is our home for a couple of days.

A studio apartment - had everything we needed - including a washer and dryer and internet.  Much appreciated as the place we stayed for the last 10 days didn't have either.

The washer and dryer was also used by the horse people ... so some of our clothes came out with little horse hairs on them.  As we were hiking in bear and mountain lion territory, I wondered what kind of scent I was giving off.

The farm we stayed at had cherry trees and horses.

They use pieces of wood to train the branches.

Little cherries already forming.

The weather was rainy during our stay so we only had opportunity to walk around the farm one night.  The bordering farm had oranges, so we had to try one that was on the ground.  It was delicious!