The drive took us into California and along some really nice roads, one in particular took us down a valley alongside a really pretty river, with the grassy hills on either side covered with purple flowers.

We arrived very early in the morning, after sleeping somewhere along the way. It was cold, there was snow on the ground and we could see the gigantic trees standing immoveably in the early morning mist. We did a couple of beautiful walks around the park, visiting some of the landmark trees such as the General Sherman Tree, said to be the largest tree in the world (by volume).

On one of the walks we had a fairly close encounter with a mamma bear and her two cubs. Sophie went very quickly from, “Dean! Bears! Get a photo!”, to “Eeeek! Dean get Back!”. They seem to be fairly common, we had to lock up our food in special bear boxes everytime we left the car.

Eager to get to Yosemite, we left in the afternoon to drove down the mountains. It was a couple of hours on, possibly driving a little tired after a few nights in the car, that I managed to turn our car in front of an oncoming pickup. That is another story altogether and I’ll write about that in another post. The amazing thing was, due to the wonders of car insurance, we were in another car and on our way again in less than a couple of hours.

Sequoia National Park, California
Sequoia National Park, California