Sequoia National Park

First of all, I'm so sorry (to my FOUR readers!) for my blogging neglect!  I have not had access to WIFI for several days while we're staying here in LA.  Today, I transferred some pics over to Don's computer and used his Sprint card to upload.  It was painfully slow and took most of the day so I'm not sure I'll be able to post pics again until we get to our hotel on Tuesday.  But until then, here are some pics from our day at Sequoia National Park!

As Libby had an "unfortunate incident" in the car on the way up the mountain, our first stop was at Grant Village where there was a little store and a visitors center.  Don did clean up duty (I'm still thanking him for that!) while I ran into the store to buy anything they had that had the word "disinfectant" on it.  A can of Lysol spray was my grand find!  After Libby's faced returned to a normal shade of skintone, we headed to the visitor center.

Here is Ally practicing her skills at identifying various animal poop...  (seriously.  no visitors center is complete without a nice display case full of petrified animal scat.)

And here are the girls making different animal footprints in a little sand box.

We watched a little video on Sequoia National Park.  It was very informative but I had to watch most of it with my eyes closed as it was filmed from the perspective of flying all around the park in a helicopter.  I was thankful when Tobin needed to go to the bathroom part way through as I as NOT interested in joining Libby as the second family member to lose their lunch at Sequoia National Park!

After the visitors center, we went for a walk through the grove some of the worlds largest trees.  It was difficult to capture the magnitude of some of these trees on film without having something in the picture giving perspective.  Alot of the trees around the giant redwoods were normal looking trees that you would see in any forest.  But then right next to it would be a massive redwood that looked like something created for a movie set for Chronicles of Narnia.  They almost didn't look real.  Some of these trees have been around for over 600 years and show signs of experiencing over 60 different fires, none of which were able to actually  kill the tree.  They were amazing to see.  Here are some of my favorite tree pics...

Here we are standing next to the end of a fallen sequoia.  That's how tall the base of one of these trees are...

Here are Don and the kids standing in front of the second largest tree in the world...the Grant Tree.

And here is a panoramic pic I took of them standing at the bottom of the Grant Tree.  (notice the tiny little family at the bottom of the picture!)

I LOVE using my timer and I'm thankful my camera didn't fall off of the fence into the snow...

I love the perspective the smaller trees give in these pictures.

This was a tree that had fallen over the path.  Rather than move it, they just hollowed it out and made the path go right through it!

This may be my favorite pic of the day!  The entire background is the base of a redwood tree.