Yosemite & Sequoia

When visiting San Francisco, we were camped up in Petaluma, which was declared to be an “evacuation warning zone” due to the Kinkade wildfire by the time we were leaving in the morning (not for immediate evacuation, but to be prepared to evacuate). Nevertheless, as we were leaving Petaluma, a lot of families had decided to move out anyway and we were stuck in evacuation traffic for a while on a Sunday morning, with ambulances zooming in the other direction for emptying out of hospitals. Electricity was off too in much of the surrounding areas, with the gas pumps not working in a few places we stopped for gas. Luckily, we had plenty to get us out of the no electricity zone before we ran out.

We drove to Yosemite National Park, passing by massive commercial almond groves. Yosemite, a World Heritage Site in the Western Sierra Nevada, is famous for its steep granite cliffs, formed by rivers, glaciers, snow and ice cutting through the valley over millions of years. We got to see El Capitan. An age-old challenge for rock climbers, it was recently made famous in the mainstream imagination by the documentary Free Solo, depicting Alex Honnold free climbing the 900 meter vertical rock face without any ropes or safety. We even saw some climbers up on it - though they are not visible in the photo below.

We did not climb El Capitan of course, but we hiked to the top of another giant slab of granite, on the Yosemite Falls Trail. A strenuous but beautiful four hours. We made up for it by eating a hearty jambalaya for dinner.

The next day we drove through Sequoia National Park and saw the General Sherman Tree, the largest known living tree on Earth by volume. I know, you thought we saw the biggest ever trees in the Redwood National Park, but the redwoods were the tallest ones and the sequoias are the largest (bigger trunk and a bit more squat). You gotta get your big tree facts straight you know.