Saturday March 26
This was our last full day in California, and Tom took most of the day off so that we could go see the Giant Sequoias- this was his fourth trip to Fresno and he didn't want to leave yet again without having seen these magnificent trees. We checked the website for the national park and saw that the road was open much further into the park now (far enough to get up to the sequoias), although we would still need chains. Fortunately there are several places in Three Rivers (the town nearest the main park entrance) where one can rent them. So we got some chains and headed into Sequoia National Park.
There were signs telling us when to put the chains on our tires, and it was still several brain-rattling miles before we actually hit snow. The scenery was amazing, driving through the Giant Forest covered in 8-12 feet of snow. One of our chains fell off at one point (unsurprisingly the one that I had installed
), but otherwise our rental Nissan Altima Hybrid performed well on the steep, snow-covered road. We didn't have a lot of time, and since we didn't have snowshoes or skis our hiking (and birding) opportunities were limited. We did get to spend some time enjoying the huge sequoia known as General Sherman, and among the few birds I saw/heard were
Red-breasted Nuthatch and
Mountain Chickadee.
Photos below... the guy in the first picture is some random dude included for scale, but the guy hugging General Sherman is my husband.