We left San Francisco early and caught the shuttle bus back to Emeryville where we picked up our hire car. She is a black VW Jetta and we named her Jessica! She is automatic so we had 2 things to master..driving on the opposite side of the road as well! Mark was first up to drive and was a little concerned about driving at first but picked it up surprisingly well and quickly! There are some differences in the rules of the road here. E.g. you can turn right on a red light if it’s clear and they have four way crossings where you take it in turns to go according to when you arrived at the junction! Confusing but we mastered it and already had an idea of what to do. We had a sat nav with the car so it was fairly simple to get there, once we got it working..took a while!!
The drive was fairly simple and we arrived in good time in a small town/village called three rivers by late afternoon. The sights nearer to three rivers were much more impressive than on the highways, and we drove in towards the mountains which was exciting! The lodge was much nicer than we had expected and we got upgraded for free! Our room was huge, even had a fridge and microwave! It reminded me of a holiday complex as there was a pool and hot tub as well as the hot sun! Was desperate to go swimming but headed into Sequoia national park instead as we haven’t got long here!
The road in and through the park was vey twisty and gained elevation quite quickly! We made regular stops to observe the scenery, which is very dry and many of the rivers have dried up. The fire alert was set to high which was concerning but understandable! We saw our first bit of wildlife as we entered the park, a deer was grazing next to the road and further on we saw two young ones by the road. We stopped to see Hospital rock which you can see in the pictures and further on at amphitheatre point. Just before amphitheatre point we turned the corner to see a mummy bear crossing the road with her cub. They paused and looked at us and then carried on. We couldn’t believe our eyes, and it took a few seconds to register what we were seeing! We continued on our journey to Moro rock which when at the top of it, was so quiet, all you could hear were the crows every now and then! Was very still and quite a weird experience! We carried on to tunnel log which is where a tree has fallen and it has been carved out to enable cars to drive through! Throughout this area there were fire warnings and you could see and smell small fires as you drove along. These were lit by man to help the forest to continue to grow.
From there we went just a little further along to the car park for the trail to the General Sherman Tree which is considered to be the largest living thing in the world. However, once we got there we decided against going down to it as it was starting to get dark, there wasn’t anyone around and seeing the bears had spooked us a little! It never worried us in Banff about seeing bears, Mark was more weary than I was but because we hadn’t seen one it hadn’t worried us! Now that we have we’re unsure about the trails and can’t believe the trails that we followed in Banff. Whenever we stopped and Mark got out, he would always say..’beep if you see a bear’!! Luckily..we haven’t yet!
We decided to head back to the lodge as it was dark and would rather get up earlier and see more tomorrow. We stopped at the upper car park for the Sherman tree and when we came past the lower car park where people were around, about 200 yards down the road there was a bear at the side of the road digging for food! We couldn’t believe how close he was to the people around the corner! The camera is rubbish at night so couldn’t get a decent picture. Mark wanted to reverse next to it but that meant me being nose to nose with him with only glass between us which I really didn’t fancy! Instead we went back to the lodge and chilled in our huge room! Was just like the American style hotel rooms that you seen in films where they just chill, eat food and watch tv!!