Sequoia Park is an incredibly beautiful and truly amazing place. It is one of the most famous and popular national parks in the United States. On the territory of 1635 square kilometers, there is almost everything you need for a good active or passive vacation: rocks and mountains with hiking trails, streams and small lakes, campsites, parking lots for trailers and ordinary cars, developed infrastructure, diverse and very wild fauna, and, of course, a real, dense, green and simply insanely fragrant forest.
In many ways, it is for the latter that you should go to Sequoia Park. The fact is that this is the closest real forest to Los Angeles with real big trees. Anything closer, such as the Angeles National Forest or Los Padres National Forest, is not at all like a forest in our usual sense. But Sequoia Park is a completely different matter. And the sequoias themselves, of course, have become a great addition to the forest.
On the eve of our departure, we rented a brand new Toyota Camry Hybrid to make our trip as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. On the morning of day “X”, we drove it on Interstate 5 in the direction of the park. The distance from Los Angeles to Sequoia Park is approximately 240 miles. The road is beautiful and very scenic, with many small towns and very authentic farms along the way. After Bakersfield and almost to the park itself, you will have to drive among endless fruit fields where oranges, lemons, almonds, and the famous California grapes are grown. The four hours of travel fly by in an instant, and here it is, the cherished, long-awaited Sequoia Park.
Entrance to the park is paid: for an ordinary car, regardless of the number of passengers inside, it costs $30; for motorcyclists, cyclists or hikers, a pass will cost $10. The ticket is not a one-time ticket, it is valid for 7 days. Upon entry, you are given a booklet and a detailed paper map. This is very important, as the Internet in Sequoia Park does not work at all, and there is no other communication there either.
The main attraction of the park is the giant sequoias, which grow mainly in a grove called Giant Forest. From the entrance to the park, it is about an hour’s drive along a narrow mountain road that constantly climbs up.
However, before talking about Sequoia, it is worth making a few clarifications. The fact is that from the point of view of biology, “sequoia” and “sequoia tree” are different species. Sequoias are slightly smaller and thicker and slightly taller, growing up to 110 meters, and their trunk diameter is no more than 7 meters. Sequoyadendron are the very giant sequoias that make up this park and grove. They are slightly lower – no higher than 95 meters, but significantly thicker – 11 meters or more in diameter. The fact that an ordinary sequoia is called redwood in English, but a giant sequoia or sequoia dendron is simply sequoia in English, adds to the confusion in this whole story. And despite the fact that the Giant Forest grove consists mainly of sequoias, we will call them sequoias for simplicity and brevity.
The grove itself is quite high: from 1800 to 2100 meters above sea level. And while in its lower part, where the park’s museum is located, you can walk and breathe quite freely, in the upper part, just where the largest tree General Sherman grows, it was already difficult to walk up and down the paths: the altitude and lower oxygen content affected. By the way, visitors to the park are regularly warned about this by signs hung in large numbers along the hiking trails.
In general, there are a lot of trails, as they say here, for hiking, in the park. There are 64 kilometers of them in the Giant Forest grove alone. There are comfortable-looking asphalt trails with benches on the sides, and ordinary ones without any amenities.
However, if you want real authenticity and unity with nature, you can walk right in the middle of the forest, not paying attention to the paths. But, of course, only at your own risk.
Although Sequoia Park is a fairly popular tourist destination, it still retains a real wilderness. Here you can easily meet harmless squirrels and chipmunks, as well as larger animals: deer and even baribals. The latter, by the way, are not above stealing. Therefore, the park management strongly recommends not leaving food unattended and always closing car windows.