The rest of the morning didn’t go all that well - though i did get to see the general grant grove which really was awe inspring, and got a couple of bad photos of the miniature badger-faced squirrel (I learned later in the gift shop that these were chipmunks, though they weren’t quite like any of the specific varieties in the book so BFSes they will always be to me). I started to get annoyed with the americans and the tourists, scaring the wildlife and loudly reading all the signs to one another and asking aloud really banal questions. Then, after I’d tried to see a bunch of sites that had been recommended by the info people, to find the roads closed (in case of danger of someone getting freaked out by the presence of snow and wheelspinning their 26-foot RV with own satellite into a ravine, no doubt) I started to get annoyed with the trees too. Definitely time to leave.
Half the trip had been in the Sequoia National Park and the other half in the Sequoia National Forest. The distinction is quite noticeable: the emphasis in the national park is on maintaining the nature just-so, whereas the National Forest allows lumber and tourist industry to spread more. As a result, the best roads and the best view of the giant sequoias was in the northern, National Forest, part, but the vibe was FAR better in the National Park, with the shakier roads and much sparser signs of habitation adding to a good atmosphere of being in the middle of nowhere.
The homeward trip took in 200 miles of tedious highway 99, driving through flat inhabited desert with nothing much to look at apart from people cutting you up or suddenly braking… But after 99 I broke off across country intending to plunge through the Carrizo Plain national monument and check out a soda lake there. But after 50 miles of flat cultivated desert my hackles were starting to raise, and when the gas station at the turnoff for the soda lake and the uncultivated desert was closed, I took this as an omen. I didn’t fancy heading into the unknown without a full tank of gas and a full bottle of water, so instead I followed the road along the groovy dry bed of the river Cuyama, through the ‘towns’ Cuyama (didn’t see it) and New Cuyama (pop. 526). New Cuyama was very cool, about the size of a large sixth-form college. I bumped into both the local sherriff and a Feisty Senorita as I headed to pre-pay for my fuel, and got drawn into a long one-sided conversation that sprang from the newfangled silicon chip in my payment card and quickly got onto the merits of web-tv. I left town past a bone-fide trailer park wondering how a pasty white boy like me gets to meet Feisty Senoritas like that. Probably by becoming a volunteer at the Single Moms Of The Desert Child Alcoholism Concern group or something.
Trying to get a bit more focused and touristy today, i’ve been making fewer stops. I set off for the Lost Grove, found it (amusingly it took me 2 tries!) and made some more attempts to capture some of the majesty of the great trees. When i got back to the car i noticed the clock needed setting to Daylight Saving Time - once i’d managed this i looked up and there was a deer, lapping at the road! I’ve just had a similar thing happen while I was writing this with a cool miniature badger-faced squirrel (no, that’s not the official name!) but it was scared off by two kids in a noisy jeep. These moments are the ones that make you feel privileged to be here, not standing behind a railing, being one of many tourists trampling the root systems of the most massive trees on earth. The trip I’m having probably wouldn’t suit the likes of Pete, as you never feel that you’re that far from civilization despite the tiny communities and the distance from the cities. But just east of here there is no road access through the great western divide mountains and access is on foot by backcountry pass only, which is cool.