Breakfast with our new Dutch acquaintances. They even had a Dutch tablecloth for the picnic table, complete with windmills, and a flag to put next to their RV. It was a chilly morning and an early trip to the bathroom meant I could admire five beautiful mule deer cruising around the park. I’m not sure what they were eating, considering the ground was so snowy, but they were munching on something! Freshly fallen pine needles perhaps? And of course, there is always one in a pack who holds up the others – he or she was just hanging out and chewing around and the others were well gone. This one had to keep running to catch up!
After brekkie and an attempt to walk down to a big sequoia (the track was blocked with snow), we drove down to visit General Grant, one of the huge sequoia trees in the area. He was a beauty; his volume is so great that he could hold 37, 000 ping pong balls. Not sure who worked that out, but someone obviously took the time to! I did the calculations and realised it would take 15 men with their arms outstretched to reach around this tree. There was also a fallen sequoia which we could walk inside – it was pretty huge too.
Then we drove the windy-ness to Sequoia National Park. We visited the info centre and admired the National Parks version of Uno (tempting!), then we caught the free shuttle bus out to see General Sherman – the biggest tree by volume in the world. He is certainly a biggun. But he is surrounded by other bigguns which were just as impressive! We braved the icy path (I didn’t fall on my butt like I was worried I might!) and wandered around admiring these giants. And also the fashion statements (white socks and thongs in snow?? On the same person that is. And another person just thongs in snow?? Keen! I mean just ‘flip flops’ on her feet). We took quite a few photos but it is really hard to capture just how humungous Sherms actually is. We have a lot of two-part pictures! There was also a cross-section cut out from the trunk of a sequoia and another one that was on its side with a hole cut in it for people to walk through. And I was able to touch the ‘ceiling’ so good luck to all those tall people going through it!
That night we camped in the campground carpark. All the campgrounds were closed due to snow, so everyone just camped in the carpark which they had cleared of snow. We built up our campfire with pine cones found around the site and also the firewood from our Dutch acquaintances from the night before. Our German neighbours decided not to share our fire (or couldn’t understand Will) – they were weird anyway and made the man in their group of three sleep outside in a tent. So mean. Quite a few people were sleeping in tents and all I can say is: CRAZY COLD! It was cold enough without being on cold ground as well! We also saw a possibly French couple who had a people-mover and were doing what we would have done if we hadn’t found Betsey – living out of their car. It looked quite difficult as they cooked their dinner on the ground, then sat in the boot, then put up their curtains for some privacy while they slept. Not like us, who leave the dishes in the sink and the bed is permanently set up in the back!
Dinner was Will’s new favourite – ham and cheese wraps cooked in the frying pan. While we were setting up we met Scruffy and all his mates – some kind of very blue bird. They were eating all the leftover crumbs left by some picnickers. He was quite tame and even sat on Betsey’s open side door (no poop thank goodness). I think he was quite annoyed when Will took the pinecone that he was eating from. He was probably eating ‘pop pine’ (like pop corn, but from a pinecone) until the cone was thrown in the fire. Oops.
A slightly chilly night again, curled up with more episodes of Teachers.
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