Day 13 - Kings Canyon National Park - Fri, June 27, 2025

 It was a cold night at 7500 ft in the mountains of California, about 55 miles outside of Fresno. We couldn’t legally have a campfire if we were below 5,000 ft or above 9,000 ft so luckily, our dispersed (refresher: basically means off-grid, no services) campsite was right in the vertical sweet spot. As mentioned preciously, we had a nice little fire and roasted the trout on Thursday night. Friday morning, we visited the visitors center at Kings Canyon National Park, which is essentially right next to Sequoia Nat. Park. Kings Canyon has big pine timber and streams and also stark, rocky high alpine sections, depending on where you go. Next, we saw the Sequoia tree with the largest known trunk diameter, named after the esteeemed General Grant. Being up close to a tree of this size “makes you feel like an Ant” as Breana says. We learned that if you were to fill up the trunk with basketballs, you could fit 150.000 of them. 

The interesting thing about nearly all of these big trees we’ve seen around here is they are bear the scars of wildfire. Many fires, in fact over many years. The resilience of these trees is in part because of their unique abilities to bounce back from this damage. How they do it, I’m afraid I’ve already forgotten but I believe it’s something to do with the bark. Regardless, the biggest of these trees continue to add mass every year around its trunk, even the ones that are half dead.

The rest of the day was spent around the campsite, where I was able to crank out some work. There’s no cell whatsoever in the high mountains so Starlink to the rescue again. After his success with the rod and reel the prior night, Caleb was incredibly ansy to go fishing again so we drove the five miles to the rocky Big Meadows Creek. This time, Mya went with us and we caught a total of three. Caleb was a little disappointed with the lack of bites, and I told him whenever I’ve tried to recreate a great day on a stream, the return trip rarely measures up to expectations. Which is as it should be, probably. Either way, we’ll remember the beautiful nights we spent in this little piece of paradise.







All the Seqouia trees are impressive but the General Grant tree truly is mind-blowing.







There’s a deer in these pictures. We’ve see a lot of
them in this area and they are very tame. Either a mule deer or a blacktail deer, which Andrew and I don’t hold in quite as high esteem as our superior eastern Whitetail.







You don’t have to drive too far to see the paths of past wildfires. Some are fairly recent.  Some of these burns are “prescribed” as they say, by park staff, in order to manage the forest, burn off dead wood and leaf litter and create fire “breaks” to head off future damage by future wildfires. It’s a bit sad to see even the fires that are intentional, as a lot of good pine seems like it’s wasted in the process.



The burned areas do typically provide a good view.


The kids were excited to see “Joel” carved into a fallen log along the path. A name that means so much to all of us. Uncle Joel spent a lot of time hiking with us on various forest trails that would accommodate his wheelchair.


Night two on the stream. Mya would only pose with her fish if she was well protected from the slime.




I’m sure the kids will long remember this beautiful mountain












 


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