Crinkly's Good Ole American Family Road Trip Day 25: Those some huge trees! (9/21/15)

Woke up relatively early and had a quick breakfast before heading out through the park and down towards sequoia national park. Drove through where the fire brigades were stationed to fight one of the nearby fires (we were near one of the big fires entering the San Francisco part of this trip and now driving near the other big one). Get into the park and there is a smoky haze filling the valleys which is both cool (creates a really interesting view of the mountains which is pretty) and smelly (the smell of smoke permeates everywhere). We finally get into the sequoia area and it is impressive; we had a small taste of the sequoias in Yosemite but this is just flat out impressive.

Crinkly is glad to be back around these gentle giants. There were way more here than in Yosemite.

This isnt even the biggest one but look how massive it is compared to the other trees/people all around it.

Crinkly admiring the awesome wonder of nature.

Crinkly and more of his giant tree friends.

Crinkly and another tree. I know they all look the same but they are so spectacular had to keep taking pictures (these werent all of them btw).

Crinkly looking at the base cross section of a fallen sequoia.

What happens when a giant sequoia falls across a road? you cut through it and make a cool little tunnel.

Root system of a fallen sequoia. Pretty impressive looking.

Fascinating colors in the sunset tonight. Love it!

As we get deeper into the park, the frequency of these giant beauties increases with groves full of them popping up here and there. Some of the trees here date back to BC times; to me that is a complete mind-explosion that this living thing has survived longer than many (probably most) civilizations. Not only is their age/resiliency impressive, so is their size/beauty. This is one of those places you just need to visit to entirely appreciate and understand; I for one plan on coming back in the future and spending a few days hiking around the trails and really submersing myself around those giant specimens. After seeing the largest (not tallest) tree in the world (General Sherman), we head out the south entrance; before we get out, we have to traverse the switchbacks from hell which have way too many hairpins to count with some pretty awesome views of the canyon before you. We get out and make our way to Kingman, AZ where we grab a room in the Best Western Kings Inn after a long day of driving. The Best Western hotels we have stayed in have all been pretty great and I think everyone is pretty impressed with the quality of the rooms/hotels when we have stayed in the BW hotels.