To the Mountains

There's a lot of geography squeezed into California. We headed out for Kings Canyon National Park, about half-way up the state, on Thursday morning. By Thursday evening we had almost made it out of Los Angeles. Or maybe it just felt like that. Anyway, onto Highway 5 and up the valley through the fields that feed most of Canada, in terms of produce like oranges and almonds. It's spring, so the temperature moved up into the 80s (that's the high 20s for the metric crowd) We pulled off the road for a taste of spring flowers. California does THEM the same way it does movies - over the top. But we wouldn't discover the full extent of that for a few days.

The road into King's Canyon loops back on itself as it climbs the mountains. You start in a zone of wildflowers and budding bushes and rushing streams and wind your way up into a rocky world in shades of green, then white, as the snow appeared. There was a lot of snow in the Sierras this winter and rolling blankets of it hugged the road as we made our way to the Montecito Sequoia lodge. It was getting late, so we passed by General Sherman's tree - the most massive tree on the planet - with a promise to get back the next day. For a while, the road is shadowed by Giant Grove, home to thousands of massive trees, some thousands of years old. We had dinner on our minds. We arrived at the lodge and cabins in shorts and sandals and slipped over the snow to check in. Our cabin - number seven - was half hidden behind a snow bank. It would have slept ten in comfort - as long as heat doesn't figure into your definition of comfort. There was a cast iron fireplace at one end of the cabin, beside a cupboard filled with wood. That night, I discovered the average burning time for a chunk of California pine is about an hour - enough time to fall asleep toasty and wake up chilly.

The Montecito was definitely grassroots (under the snow) but the food was great, and the lodge was always filled with families and educational groups. The highlight was a moonlight snowshoe to admire constellations that I haven't seen for years. During the day, we headed out to have our breath taken away by the waterfalls and giant trees the area is famous for. It's staggering to stand beside a tree that was a seedling at the time of the Roman Empire and now has the mass of a pod of blue whales. The trees, like the General Sherman in the photo below, really give the term "staying power" a whole new perspective.