Day 62, Summer in Asia, Bakersfield, CA
The best-laid plans often require an alarm clock. Yesterday, what was supposed to be an early start to drive to the Giant Sequoia National Park, didn’t work since none of us set an alarm. We ended up being startled awake from comatose by housekeeping at noon. We shifted plans, went to Target, saw a movie, hung out at the pool. When you’ve been hustling around for a couple of months, it’s easy to feel grateful for an unintentional down day. It felt decadent.
This morning, with the help of all our alarms, we found our way to the coffee and were on our way to see the tree giants at a reasonable hour as planned.
The regular park entrance fee of $30 was waived for the day due to a special celebration. That was the upside. Downside was that it was packed. All the parking lots were full. Upside was they had free shuttles from the outlying areas.
We had grabbed some subs just before entering the park, so we could have a picnic among the Redwoods. On our table were instructions of what to do if a bear were to invite himself to the picnic. The advice was to stand your ground should a bear approach, don’t give it food, and scare it away. In theory that sounds reasonable, but should the situation arise, I’m probably more likely to toss him the tuna sub and run for the car.
The trees were fantastic. I was here as a young kid and the trees seemed enormous. But unlike most things that seem smaller as you become an adult (like revisiting your elementary school and it seems to have shrunken), the trees were as large as ever.
The General Sherman tree is the largest tree in the world, when measured by mass. The roots are shallow, which surprised me. Perhaps that’s why the branches aren’t expansive, the way some trees are. They stay relatively close to the trunk. Most of these trees don’t die from fire or disease, but by falling over. Quite something.
