Saturday, March 4. 2006
Belated Seqouia
Saturday, March 4. 2006
So two weeks ago, Tim and I went to Sequoia National Park, land of the giant redwoods. Amazingly this is the only place that they grow. The picture to the right is of the "General Sherman" the largest living thing in the world. I made a flickr set with some pictures from the park. The trip was definatly filled with a roller coaster of emotions.
It all began on Friday afternoon. We got everything packed up and headed for a friend of Tim's that was going to Fuller Seminary in Pasadena. We left around 5. Moral was up. According to google this trip should have taken us 1 hour and 40 minutes. Because of rain and hellish LA traffic, it took us 3 and a half hours. Moral was down. That night we stayed in Pasadena. Tims friend actually knew some of my college aquintances that were going to Fuller... small world. Anyway, the next day we were off to Sequoia. We decided to stop off at a walmart before we got there to buy a hat, some gloves, and a rain poncho just in case it was going to be cold or wet. It turned out to be a good idea. Neither Tim or I really did our research on Sequoia. Tim has a book about trails in National Parks. The entire trip up we were reading about various trails and getting really siked about hiking. Moral was up. We failed to read the "Only open from May to August" captions...
Before we could enter the park we were required to purchase tire chains. We were also advised to let a loved one know what we were up to, because there was a bad storm coming in. Moral was down. Tim managed to get me pumped about staying in a campground about 7000 feet up, it wasn't until we got up to 7000 feet that I realized this was not going to happen. It was extremely beautiful going up that mountain, and the snow was coming down hard at times. Moral was up. We went straight for the Giant Forest to check out the General Sherman. We were severly under prepared for hiking, everyone around us had show shoes or cross country skis. We did manage to go on a brief hike through the forest and I snapped a few pics. We decided we needed to get back down the mountain before nightfall to set up camp.
Wet and cold from having to stop every 5 minutes and check our snow chains (they were hitting my brake line after a certain speed), and ill from the winding road and having been snacking on penuts, vienna sausage, and pringles all after noon; we finally made it down to about 1800 feet were we were going to setup camp. Ofcourse we hadn't brought fire wood so we had to go into town and get some. Moral was down. Some how we ended up paying $14 for around 10 small logs, but we were going to have a nice campfire and some warm food in our bellies soon. Moral was up. It was around 40 degrees at that elevation, but because of the chance of rain, we opted for sleeping in the blazer. We setup camp, and started working on fire. Never in my life have I seen fire be so stubborn.
There was something severly wrong with our overpriced logs. We were all set to cook some grub and even use our newly purchase perculator for some coffee. I kid you not, after an hour of trying every trick in the book and creating nothing but thick plooms of retina burning and clothes embedding smoke, we still had no sustainable source of heat. Moral was down. The only way to keep any heat at all was to incesitantly fan the logs with our McAlly road atlas. This prooved to be rather amusing for both Tim, I, and anyone in the campground that may have seen us. After about 2 hours since we had tryed to start the fire, we still had nothing worth sitting around but did somehow manage to make some coffee. We told eachother tomorrow would be fire night. Moral was up. Fire night never came.
We woke up in the blazer cold as the tip of your nose when your waiting for the school bus in mid January. It had rained over night. Moral was down. Seeing this suppressed the ambition to get out of our sleeping bags until atleast 10:30, which was about the time we went to sleep the night before. Tim was still optomistic, but I was not going to hike through the rain in my already wet shoes. We decided to bite the bullet and head back to San Diego a day early.
I'm definatly glad I went on the trip. I got some decent pictures and spent some quality time with a good friend. I hope to go back some day, some day when it's allot warmer.
