Cali part 5: Sequoia and Kings Canyon

Yosemite was definitely beautiful, but I think for me Kings Canyon surpassed it. Less traveled and certainly more rural, the drive into Kings Canyon is stunning and precarious. It's also a road to nowhere, literally to "Trail's End", and which point all travelers must turn around and head back over the same treacherous thirteen miles they drove on their way in; Thirteen mile that took over an hour to traverse the first time and will certainly take equally long on the way back, if not more so since now the trip is mostly on the outer lane, the one that seems to be only inches from a catastrophic drop.

It's an amazing and completely worthwhile trip.

On this final day for the parks we saw General Grant and General Sherman (the two biggest trees ever), we drove into and out of the stunning Kings Canyon, and straight through Sequoia in a setting fall sun.

We also saw a bear. A real, honest-to-goodness, big black bear.

He was beautiful.

The trees...they're big.

Kings Canyon: the pictures don't do it justice.

That's our road way down there...

...and way down there, too...

...and that's our road again, hanging precariously off the side of that mountain...

Sequoias are surprisingly spongy on the outside

I have no photographic evidence, but imagine a bear here...