Meeting the Generals: #AVMTour Recap Part Five
Previously, on the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Tour… The girls and I flew to San Francisco, saw two blue whales and a humpback, experiencing the wonder of the redwoods in Muir Woods, and enjoyed the coastal scenery along California’s Highway 1 on our way to Sequoia National Park.
I remember road trips when I was a kid, sitting in the back seat of the car and daydreaming as I stared out the window at the passing landscape. I remember feeling safe no matter where we were, safe in the knowledge that Dad was driving and had things under control. Now that I’m the Dad driving the family car, it’s a completely different experience. Driving up the long and winding road to Sequoia National Park last month, looking down at the shoulder of the road, which often plummeted hundreds of feet straight down, I felt anything but safe. However, judging from the cheerful noises coming from the back seat, I think my girls got to experience what I did as a kid, feeling safe in one’s own little world while watching the world speed by.
We arrived in the heart of Sequoia National Park a little before noon. With all the “excitement” the night before (chronicled in my last blog post), none of us was going on more than five hours sleep, but that didn’t keep us from having a very pleasant day trip to see the world’s most massive trees. (In case you’re wondering, sequoias are the most massive, while redwoods are the tallest. Both counted toward the “Vegetable” portion of the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral tour.)
The only real problem during the day was that I had signed Hannah up for horseback riding at 3pm. We started our visit to the national park at the Giant Forest Museum near the General Sherman tree. (The two biggest sequoias in the area are named after Civil War generals.) The horse stables were near the General Grant tree, at least an hour further along the Generals Highway that runs through the park. That meant we had maybe an hour to explore the Big Trees Trail near the museum before we needed to get on the road, find lunch, and make our way to the stables by 3pm.
Pro tip: If you’d like to experience the sequoias along the Big Trees Trail in Sequoia National Park, give yourself more than an hour.
We could have spent three hours wandering along the Big Trees Trail that day, marveling at the enormous tree trunks all around us. They weren’t as magical as the towering redwoods of Muir Woods, but they were impressive nonetheless. My rented wide-angle lens came in handy once more, although the sun shining directly overhead make photography a challenge. As it was, we spent almost two hours walking along the one-mile trail, with the girls stopping every ten feet to explore something that fascinated them (given where we were, it was usually a tree), and me alternately trying to get the perfect photo and then nagging the girls to hurry up so we didn’t miss horseback riding. Not my finest moment as tour guide, photographer, or dad.
This gave us just over an hour to make it to the stables. It was maybe only 15 minutes as the crow flies, but the Generals Highway in no way resembles the flight of a crow. It’s fairly flat–we had already made it over the top of the mountain on the way up that morning–but it’s an incredibly winding two-lane road with only a handful of places to pass another car. I drove just a tad faster than the stated speed limit, assuming “a tad faster than” means “roughly double.” Around 2:50 I noticed that my cell phone had the faintest amount of service (for the first time since we left the hotel that morning!), so I had Hannah call the stables and let them know we were coming. That was maybe the first time I had breathed in about an hour, since I knew that even if we were a bit late, they would wait for us.
Miraculously, we pulled into the parking lot at the stables right at 3pm. I don’t know how I pulled that off. Wormholes, I think.
Hannah had a great time on her horse that afternoon. She’s been riding horses at Oak Hill Day Camp here in Nashville for a few summers now, so she’s a comfortable and competent rider. (Her mom rode horses competitively in high school, so Hannah has that working for her, too.) The staff at Grant Grove Stables were friendly, experienced, and helpful, so I felt good about letting her go out on the trail with them–without me. Lily was too young for horseback riding, since riders need to be able to direct their horses independently, so she stayed at the stables with me. The owner of the stables arranged for me to lead Lily on horseback around the corral there, which was just enough action for Lily to not feel left out.
Lily and I had about an hour to kill while Hannah was on the trail, so we drove over to see the General Grant tree, the third most massive tree in the world. It was definitely big, but we couldn’t get too close to it. We had more fun walking through a fallen sequoia that lay adjacent to the trail leading to the General. I could stand up inside the hollow trunk, with a foot or two of headroom to spare! Since we had made our 3pm deadline, I was more relaxed than I had been on the Big Trees Trail earlier in the day, so Lily and I had a great time, just the two of us.
I forgot to mention that earlier in the day we had picked up Junior Ranger booklets from the Foothills Visitor Center, before the drive up the mountain. While we waited for Hannah to get back from her ride, Lily and I finished the activities in her booklet. Thanks to Lily’s enthusiasm for word searches, we helped Hannah with one of the activities in her booklet, too! Word searches and mazes–they’re like catnip for Lily! When Hannah returned, our top priority was turning in those booklets at one of the visitor centers in the park so the girls could become official Junior Rangers. I got the whole ceremony on video, at Hannah’s request. They still, weeks later, wear their Junior Ranger badges with pride.
By this time, it was pushing 5pm, and I knew we had to start heading back. After the previous day’s gift shop disappointment at the marine discovery center, I was determined to give the girls some quality time at one of the park gift shops. That meant heading back to the Lodgepole Visitor Center, halfway between General Grant and General Sherman. We had (very, very quickly) picked up lunch there earlier in the day, noting at the time what a great gift shop they had. Driving the Generals Highway this time was much less stressful!
The Lodegpole gift shop delivered, although not for Lily, who didn’t find any stuffed animals she liked and opted for ice cream instead. (Ice cream, not popsicles or fruit bars. Only the good stuff for her.) Hannah spent some of her trip allowance, and I picked up a baseball cap for the first time in my life.
Sidebar #1: I have a big head. I’m not referring to my ego, although that may be true, too. No, I mean that every time I’ve borrowed someone’s baseball cap, I’ve had to open it up a few notches. My head is big, and I’ve never thought caps looked good on me. But after burning my forehead on the whale tour, I wasn’t about to head to the Grand Canyon without some head covering. Thus, I am not the proud owner of a Sequoia National Park baseball cap.
Sidebar #2: Giving the girls a trip allowance was one of the smartest things I did on this trip. On past trips, I’ve had to deal with the girls begging me to buy them things at every. single. gift. shop. This time around, I gave them each $5 every morning of the trip, which they could spend or save as they wished. Visiting gift shops became so much more fun for me. No more begging, just the occasional question from Lily about whether or not she could afford something. Okay, so I bought them a couple of extra souvenirs at the Grand Canyon later in the trip, when they were both out of cash. But, boy did the trip allowance put a stop to all that begging and whining!
Having managed to get Hannah to her horseback riding in time and to get both girls their Junior Ranger badges before the Rangers went home for the evening, I was now up against another deadline: sunset. I really wanted to see the General Sherman tree, the world’s most massive tree. (Remember that General Grant is the world’s third most massive tree. I have no idea what tree is second.) But it’s not right off the Generals Highway like General Grant is. Seeing it would have involved at least an hour and a half of walking, most of that uphill. It was close to 6pm, the girls were tired, and we hadn’t yet had dinner.
Going into the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Tour, I told myself that I would stick to a pace that the girls could handle, even if I wanted to do more and see more. So we skipped General Sherman and started the long drive (downhill this time!) back to the hotel. Missing General Sherman was made a little better by the “golden hour” light that filled the forest as the sun started setting. I got some of my best photos of the day in a span of 15 minutes as we exited the park.
Dinner was simple that night. We found a well-stocked convenience store in Three Rivers, about a mile from our hotel. We picked peanut butter, jelly, and bread… and knives and plates and napkins. And lots of healthy snacks for our road trip the next day. I was determined we wouldn’t have another late night with sick kids in Arizona!
Speaking of the next day’s road trip, it was epic. More on that in my next post.