Kings Canyon National Park

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike. –John Muir

Heading out from San Luis Obispo, our destination was to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. We retraced some of our drive through the California Central Valley. This time, though, we turned northeastward, driving through miles and miles of orchards and fields growing strawberries, blueberries and other produce around Fresno. We learned later that we were driving on part of the “Fresno County Fruit Trail”.

We soon ascended into the Sierra foothills and arrived at an aged RV park, the closest one to the entrance of the twin Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. On our first day, we decided to explore just Kings Canyon.

Maybe if you think about Sequoia trees, you think about Sequoia National Park. I know I did, and did not know what to expect with Kings Canyon. This park has its share also, though. Upon arrival at the park we soon turned off onto a parking lot for a half-mile loop that would bring us face-to-face with these majestic sentinels of the forest.

In the morning, when the day was fresh and new and we were one of the first on the trail, the feeling of walking among the tall trees was indescribable. It isn’t just the giant sequoia: there is the ponderosa pine, the sugar pine, and the white fir, among others.

The headliner in this area is the Grant Tree. Its stats are impressive. It is the third largest in the world by volume, 268 feet tall and 1700 years old. I tried to wrap my head around what was going on in the world when this tree was but a seedling.

It’s not age that makes a sequoia grow so tall, though. Just the right amount of nutrients, water and sun is the secret sauce that makes one tree thrive so extraordinarily.

Also on this trail is the trunk of a long-felled sequoia which we could walk through. There is a photograph on a signboard which shows that this trunk sheltered a construction crew around the turn of the century, and likely other travelers needing a spot to camp for the night down through the ages.

Sequoias decay very slowly when they fall, continuing to exist for hundreds of years.

As wonderful as all of this was, it was only part of what was to come during our day in the park. Upon entering the gate, we were delighted to discover that the Kings Canyon Scenic Byway had just been opened for the summer. Every time I’d looked it up online, the byway had still not been cleared from the winter snows.

I’m so glad we did not miss seeing it!

Here we were, with a ringside seat to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Mount Whitney is the highest peak in this range, and it’s possible we were looking right at it, but I can’t be sure which peak it was.

As we descended into Kings Canyon, the South Fork of the Kings River came into view.

Gushing waterfalls streamed from the high walls of the canyons to join the roiling river waters.

Boyden Cave sounded interesting so we stopped, but the trail to whatever cave that may have been there was closed. It was a nice break, though, and we enjoyed the scenery all around.

The grand finale to this drive was Grizzly Falls.

We stayed a little while to take in this extraordinary sight before regretfully turning the truck around. The road continued to Cedar Grove Visitor Center and Zumwalt Meadow, but it had not yet been cleared and opened for the summer.

Retracing our drive, we turned off at Hume Lake.

A man by the name of John Eastwood had this dam built in 1908 for his lumbering operation. The lake served as a holding tank for cut sequoia and pines, and water supply for a 54-mile flume that carried the water through Kings Canyon to a town on the other end for finishing. At one time, an entire community lived here.

Thankfully, the era of sequoia harvesting ended in 1929. The sawmill had burned down. By 1936 the federal government came under ownership of the lake as part of the Sequoia National Forest. And, decades later, we could enjoy a picnic lawn chair lunch on its shores.

Next time – Sequoia National Park