Road Trip West Day 5 (Sequoia National Park)

Get ready for a boat load of pictures. I narrowed it down to these 20 from about 50 that I wanted to post.....I had a blast taking pictures at Sequoia National Park. I'll give a brief caption of what each one is. They got a little jumbled, and seeing as I still have about 12 days to catch up on I'm going to leave them how they are. Fun Fact: Sequoia National Park is home to over 2,000 Sequoias that have a greater than 10 foot diameter. and another 6,000 under 10 ft in diameter.

This is a 'Baby Sequoia' as in 400-500 years old, haha!

Peace! found in the local Bear-Proof Dumpster

If you enlarge this one, You can see tiny little Abbey way down the path next to some rather large trees.



Found a little stream running by a fallen Sequoia

A fallen tree, looking at old rings. The squiggles are years that the tree grew around fire scars!

Fire Scarred tree. Give it about 500 years and it'll be good as new, assuming there isn't another fire.


A dried Sequoia Cone. Smaller than the average coniferous cone, yet it contains thousands of Sequoia Seeds.




A fallen Sequoia. You can really see the root system still sticking out of the ground. These roots were burnt After the tree had fallen. The roots grow about 5 feet deep but up to 150 feet out from where they are!

A fallen tree with Ab standing by the roots!

Even though this tree is split in two and mostly hollowed by fire, it will more than likely completely heal and grow for upto another 1,000 years.

A 'green' or 'wet' Cone. These will stay green and on the tree for up to 20 years. They actually photosynthesize for the tree, which helps with it's enormous size. These cones will ONLY fall after a fire. The fires below cause the heat to go up and dry the cones, in which case they open up and spread their seeds and then fall to the ground. Without fire, the Sequoia cannot reproduce, they grow only from seeds.

Beetle Rock

Beetle Rock


Campfire, the last night at Sequoia.