It’s still winter in the Sierra Mountains while in the foothills spring has come. What this means for us is that we we can wear shorts in our campgound but plan on tromping in snow if we want to see the giant trees.
We pulled into the Potwisha Campground around 1:30 but it was after 3:30 before we got settled into a camp spot. Its a National park campground so it has very short, narrow, unlevel sites. Needless to say we did some stupid stuff and got too picky so it took us a long while to park.
We quickly drove to Hospital Rock where we hiked down a road to Buckeye campground then along the Paradise Creek Trail. We estimate it was a 4 mile hike. Such beautiful country!
Monday dawned bright and sunny, a good day to view the mountains and giant trees. The road into the park is only open up to The Waksachi Lodge and Lodgepole Visitors Center which includes the General Sherman Tree. This is the largest tree by volume in the forest. There are others that are taller and have a bigger diameter and are older (up to 3,000 years old) but Sherman is considered the biggest. It is over 2200 years old and its biggest branch is 7 ft in diameter.
Before we saw Sherman, we stopped at the Giant Forest Museum then hiked in the snow up to the Tunnel Log. We were smart and used our hiking poles so we didn’t slip and fall.
The scenery along the way was stunning. We are glad we did this today as the forcast for the rest of the week is rain & snow every day. We’d like to stay longer but not in rain and snow. Time to move on.
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