To a canyon barely accessible by road

If you aren’t hiking, it’s hard to see much of Kings Canyon National Park. The large area set aside for this natural wonder in eastern California abuts Sequoia National Park, where Masayo and I saw the largest living thing on Earth yesterday, but has quite a different feel. Kings Canyon is a huge wilderness with almost no roads. And as we are confined to the car due to the difficulties experienced in Utah we could only see a bit of Kings Canyon.

Even so, I’m very glad we ventured forth anyway. It’s no good focusing on what you didn’t get to do, only on what you did do. More adventure and wonder may be awaiting the intrepid in Kings Canyon but what you can see merely by car is pretty overwhelming itself.

I’m afraid, actually, that the National Park doesn’t get full credit for the sights of today: the highway from Reedley, CA, where we lodged last night, dips into a sliver of the Park connected to Sequoia but not the rest of Kings Canyon, then exits for a meandering drive through Sequoia National Forest. The final several miles of the highway enter the main part of Kings Canyon before petering out at a place called Roads End, from where you can hike extensively.

Got that? By car you see Park, then forest, then Park again.

The first little sliver of Park contained an unmissable attraction: the world’s second biggest living thing, the massive tree called General Grant.

Like General Sherman in Sequoia NP, General Grant lies beside a paved trail easily accessible from a parking lot. The weather was pretty great today and there was a manageable number of tourists walking underneath the shade of the outsized vegetation in the grove. After a nervous-looking squirrel blocking the path finally zig-zagged his way into the underbrush, Masayo and I set out on the short loop to see General Grant. (And every time I heard the name I thought about Mr. Grant from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I wondered if the tree would remind me of Ed Asner.)

While we had to wait in line for photos at General Sherman yesterday, today there was nobody at General Grant when we arrived. There is a little wooden sign in front of the tree emblazoned with its name and its nickname, “the nation’s Christmas tree”. Here in early summer it wasn’t particularly Christmasy but instead, with its gnarled, 1,600-year old trunk and dense-looking stoutness, the tree had an admirable air of quiet superiority and dogged inevitability. (Kind of like Ed Asner, come to think of it.)

The drive through Sequoia National Forest was unexpectedly scenic; at first the views looked from high ridges way down to a distant whitish-turquoise river, and as the steep road descended that same river was suddenly flowing right next to the highway. We put our windows down so we could listen to the incessant, pounding white noise of the water, its forceful flow crashing against giant boulders and sending great puffs of mist exploding in the air right at eye level. I was transfixed; it seemed to go on for miles and I kept pulling over and trying to capture the beastliness of the waterway with my camera.

For lunch we stopped at a place called Grizzly Falls which turned out to be a huge, roaring and wide neutron bomb of endless water plunging onto a field of dark, smooth rocks. After a picnic lunch at a table Masayo and I edged near the water for photos, but the splash was scattered so wide that we had to pull back lest the cameras got destroyed. (Her twin iPhone disasters so far on this trip have made us both a little nervous about nature vs. technology.) I crept closer to the falls for a scenic, wild, mountain man blood sugar check – and ended up drenched just from those few seconds in the mist.

The main part of Kings Canyon, by contrast, proved less scenic from the road. It was by now quite hot and the canyon baked. We got out of the car a few times for the views and were always happy to get back in to the air conditioning. This part of Kings Canyon – the actual canyon – is for hikers and true outdoors types. In another life, or on another trip, maybe we could have a richer interaction with the Park. For today though, the ancient sequoia groves, unearthly trees on hillsides, and the breathtaking water displays would have to suffice.

And they did. I am glad we split Sequoia and Kings Canyon into two days, and I can’t wait to come back and see more of both.

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