But you are the beloved porcupine

2004-02-15 - 8:59 p.m.

I'm kinda tired tonight, so I think today's entry is going to be a photo entry. Yup, I woke up this morning in a hotel in Tulare and then spent the day in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Driving into Sequoia from Tulare requires driving through some foothills, which I'm sure are hot and dry and horrible in July, but in February were beautiful. The weather was sunny and blue and the grass was green. Not too much in the wildflower department yet, though. Anyway, here's a picture looking up through the foothills at the mountains of Sequoia.

When we got up into the mountains, it got a lot colder, of course, and then the weather began to turn sour. But we still got to see some of the sequoia trees. Here's a picture of the biggest organism on earth by volume. That big tree there in the middle is General Sherman the Sequoia. I missed the part where they explained why they named it that. It's 280 feet tall and 37 feet in diameter at the base.

So then we drove over to Kings Canyon. Mostly we couldn't get in there because the roads were closed for the winter, but there were a few places we could see. We stopped at one overlook and saw ridges of mountains poking up through the mist.

And also from the same overlook but looking west instead of south, I could see this ridge with redwood trees silhouetted against the clouds.