Day 2: Monday 14th June 2010: Elk Grove to Kings Canyon/ Sequoia National Parks (Miles to Date: 597)

The beds at the Holiday inn Express were so comfortable, and it was with much regret that we extracted ourselves from our slumbers and descended down to our complimentary breakfasts. We have stayed at so many Holiday Inn Express hotels that we can name the breakfasts items before we get to the breakfast room. These breakfasts would not score high in terms of culinary excellence but they fill a space and keep us going until lunchtime.

We hit the road just as the day is warming up and head south towards Fresno in California's Central Valley. There is nothing too exciting about Fresno, except that it has two “Sweet Tomatoes” restaurants, which is just about our favourite restaurant chain. Our timing is perfect as we arrived at the restaurant at 1:00pm, and as usual we proceeded to eat far too much. Can one eat too much salad? After our gorging we set out for our final destination, the twin National Parks of Sequoia and Kings Canyon. We pass out of urban Fresno into the hot, dry and fertile farms lands of the Central Valley. The grasslands are already parched and bleached a pale yellow by the fierce sun. In amongst the dry grasses are vivid green groves of citrus trees, although it is too early in the season to tell what fruit these trees were yet to bear. This valley is famous for its fruit plantations. It is too early to taste the oranges and lemons but there are plenty of fruit stands selling tasty cherries and succulent plums and peaches, so we had no option but to buy some of these fruits.

Soon after leaving the fruit stand we began to climb into the mountains. The temperature in the Valley was in the mid 90s and it was not too much cooler on our climb, which resulted in our poor Jeep beginning to overheat. Cautiously we pressed on and the views across the valleys many thousands of feet below us were stunning. The scenery changed along our route from low-lying scrub plants in the valleys to tall pine trees and mountain pastures. Knowing that petrol was not available in the National Park we pulled into a gas station to refuel. This was not your typical gas station but more of a rustic Indian Trading Post, and expensive at that! With little choice we filled up and moved on.

Finally we reached the National Parks entrance and found our accommodation, a small wooden cabin at Grant Grove Village. To call this a cabin would be to give an unwarranted Illusion of grandeur. A more appropriate description would have been shed! Our “shed” was sparsely decorated with two beds, with rock hard mattresses, a table and chair and bedside table. Also being in a forest and with postage stamp-sized windows it was as a dark as a Hobbit's burrow! Anyway it was home for a couple of nights.

We didn't hang around our cabin for too long as the day was drawing to a close and we wanted to do some exploring. A short drive from Grants Grove Village is Grants Grove, where there are some magnificent specimens of the giant Sequoias after which the National Park is named. These monstrous trees live only in a narrow stretch of alpine real estate on the west facing side of the high Sierra Nevada Range in California. They are the largest trees in the World when measured by the volume of their huge trunks. Starting from tiny seeds these magnificent trees grow to over 200 feet in height, with trunks up to 40 feet in circumference. The giant Sequoias also have a long life span, with some living to be over 3000 years old. The coastal Redwood trees which we had seen over on the California coast reach over 300 feet in height, but have much narrower trunks, so in terms of volume or mass are much smaller. There was a short trail that took us through the Grove, where as well as finding live, upright Sequoias we came across some fallen giants, which gave us the opportunity to see their sprawling root structures. Surprisingly, these structures are small relative to the size of the tree and it easy to see why there are quite a number of toppled trees throughout the Park. The headline tree of the Grove is the General Grant tree, a majestic monarch. The Sequoias have five stages of development; seedling, sapling, spire-top, mature and monarch. At the mature stage the Sequoias have reached their maximum height but continue to add thickness to their trunk, and also their branches begin to contort and become less regular in shape. After a quick photo opportunity we head off to make the most of the remaining daylight.

Our final mission of the day is to drive down to and along Kings Canyon. This is a deep canyon that has been sculpted by the erosive flow of the Kings River and long gone glaciers. It is deep and is surrounded by steep granite cliffs. There is only one road in, which winds its way down several thousand feet to the valley floor and from there it follows the Kings River to a point appropriately known as “Road's End”. This point is the start of many hiking trails into the back-country wilderness of the high Sierras. We were not planning to be that adventurous today so instead were intending a simple road trip. The journey to “Road's End” took quite a while as the road twisted and turned down the side of the cliff, offering glorious views and precipitous drops. We also loved the sight of tall spikes of flowers shooting from the yuccas which clung to the sides of the granite slopes. On reaching the valley floor we pass alongside the bubbling, turbulent waters of the King's River, swollen by the continuing melting of snow from the Sierras. Some miles further down (the road from Grant Grove Village to Road's End is about 40 miles long) we reached a pull-in for a waterfall. Never ones to miss the a waterfall opportunity we piled out and took the few steps to where the falls dropped some 50 feet into a pool. The force of the tumbling water threw out a spray and gusty wind, soaking us all in just a few seconds. Exposure was short, and we quickly beat a cold and damp retreat back to the warmth of the car. Reaching “Road's End” there was not much to see, and by this time we were getting hungry so we turned the car around and made our way back up along the King's Canyon, and climbed the mountain to return to Grant Grove Village.