Welcome to Sequoia land

With sequoias from Sierra Nevada (giant sequoias) and coast redwoods from California and Oregon coast it’s like with alligators and crocodiles. Almost the same, but not really. There are two the most important differences: geography (see previous sentence) and size (giant are the biggest, coast redwoods - the tallest).

 

Chief Grand Cherokee and Eddie in front of coast seqouias

And as everything is made in China anyway, there are also Chinese dawn sequoias. Once thought to be extinct, were found in 1944 somewhere in remote mountains, far from civilized world. Nobody says officially it’s a fake, but you know Chinese products…

If you’d like to see giant sequoias and coast redwoods there are lots of them, most of all in California. Oregon doesn’t really have that many. The furthest north sequoia forest is maybe an hour drive from California-Oregon state line.

Sequoias nuclear test site?

And in California? The most famous one is of course Sequoia National Park. We had to skip it though as it was not on our route. Besides with our dislike of cold it was not a place for us in mid-April. Other time. We missed General Sherman, which is the largest organism on Earth. It’s 2100 years old, 250 feet tall, 30 feet in diameter at breast-height, and unbelievebly heavy, estimated weight is1385 tons! Chapaue bas Ladies and Gentelman (although maybe not in April, not to risk getting a cold)!

We’ve almost seen some sequoias in Yosemite National Park. There are some next to route "120", just behind the sign that the route is closed (usually by mid-May) there are two small sequoia groves in a walking-with-kids distance. We wanted to go there but, to our disappointment, we got there just before dark and it was already too cold and too late for walks.

As we skipped the largest sequoias we’ve decided to at least take a good look at the tallest ones. While in San Francisco we went on a day trip to Big Basin Redwoods. Mostly because we didn’t know yet we had 400 miles of sequoias ahead. 

Big Basin Redwoods State Park is a nice place for a walk, although parking was quite expensive - 10 USD per car (fee allows to park for free in all the other parks and beaches in the area until the end of day). We got there by winding road through the mountains, views are great, and in the park there are quite a few really nice walking trails. Warm clothes are a must in April - tall trees block the sunlight and the park is really high in the mountains.

Big Basin Redwoods

If you go north by the coast you can skip it. You’ll see many more breathtaking sequoias on your way. Our favorite place was Avenue of the Giants in northwest California. It’s 32-mile road parallel to "101", or, to be more exact, it’s an old "101” crossing Humbolts State Park and Redwoods National Park. In the past state and federal authorities were racing each other buying land and declaring parks. Now they cooperate pretty nicely. It’s probably the most photographed sequoia place, as the road winds among huge trees and very often it narrows so much that hands of Americans start shaking and to Poles it reminds home.

Avenue of the Giants

Avenue of the Giants is as majestic as its name suggests. It takes about an hour to drive it and it doesn’t feel enough. Of course there are pull-outs to stop and take a walk among the trees. Sometimes wandering among them you can feel like in Spielberg’s “Jurrasic Park”. In 6D, with cold, wind, smells, banana slugs (Ola was in charge of the camera so we don’t have any pictures of them). They really resemble bananas smashed on trees!!! Yuck (from Ola)

Avenue of the Giants is a "scenic drive", but as we wrote before there are also a few walking trails. One of them leads to Large Tree, over 100-meter-tall sequoia. Sequoias were so smart that they developed natural immunity to fires. They can easily survive flames, branches are very high and on top of that they release seeds after fires. On all the old sequoias there are visible signs of fire. As nature likes symbiosis sequoias now have symbiotic species called American fireman, who every once in a while causes control fire. This way around sequoias plants usually are quite small and there aren’t many smaller trees that could block the view. So you can just look up at tops of giant trees. (Of course we understand the reasons for prescribed fires, though it would be easier to let people collect some wood if they want to make a camp fire).

Sky above seqouias

There are more backroads with trailheads, but they are not for RVs, so we went straight north. We would probably go there if we could. On tpictures in a free newspaper handed out at the park entrance we saw narrow roads among the trees. Besides it’s worth to spend some time there looking for wildlife, outside of season it’s difficult to meet there anyone else but a bear or an elk. 

"101" area is full of B-category attractions. Everyone with a high sequoia in their own backyard uses some magic to make attraction out of it. It can be a sequoia tree house, sequoia chimney (we didn’t stop there but it looked like a house built around empty sequoia tree), expensive sky trail gondola ride between trees called Trees of Mystery (we could tell them the mystery, they’re called sequoias). We started looking around for petting and feeding sequoia zoo or farm…

Perfect American attraction

We got tempted by Drive Thru Tree Park. There is so many of them it’s a must-see. We chose the most famous one around. In park newspaper on one hand they write about it on the other it seems they are ashamed and they assure the readers that now nobody would allow it now. But well, those holes in trees were made tens of years ago, we can’t do anything about it now, and it’s fun to drive through it with your car. Eddie didn’t fit so we just took a walk.

Further north there were just pines, pines and other pines. And drive-thru sequoias were replaced by drive-thru espresso kiosks. Can’t live without coffee in the north …

Sleeping beauty, exhausted by sequoias...