Sierra-Cascade Trip: Mariposa Grove Yosemite

We left Yosemite Valley in the afternoon the humans are most active and took the scenic drive to the south entrance of the park to the Mariposa Grove of Sequoias. The biggest here were 27 feet in diameter. We we were told there was one 44 feet across in Sequoia National Park - but that was too long a drive. We again got last minute reservations, this time we scored the historic Wawona Hotel. A very neat wooden structure over 100 years old, with long wooden porch across the front, several smaller even older units scattered among the trees around it, and few crowds - even in mid-July. Not as dramatic as the Awahnee, but I liked it better. The big porch, small rooms, and community baths made it more old-timey, more homey, and less busy. We'd definitely stay there again. Dinner on the porch as the sun set was good if not spectacular, but the setting was impeccable.

The next morning we got to sleep in a bit since we wanted breakfast in the dining room and had to wait for it to open, but still got to the grove before any of the crowds arrived. It was like a hike into prehistory as we left the parking lot. The trees got bigger and denser until we arrived in the center of the grove, where the cinnamon trunked Sequoias towered over a green meadow and the low, log visitor center. I felt positively elfin among them. They said that a single mature Sequoia has as much wood in it as an acre of prime Northwest timberland, but that they were hard to log commercially as they were so big and brittle that when they fell, much of the wood was destroyed. Only about 30% were cut before they were preserved. All the most unusual trees have names like "telescope tree" and "clothespin" given in the early days of commercial tours. There's nothing quite like walking amount these thousand year old giants to make you feel transitory and insignificant.

Again the crowds were building as we descended the grove around noon. We headed north along the Sierras as we had come in, on our way to Lassen National Volcanic Park a half day's drive.







https://picasaweb.google.com/jbp1111/MariposaGroveYosemiteJul2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCKDEkqGLhoyuwgE