Blog Post by: Samantha
After a year stuck inside, Sequoia National Park was truly a breath of fresh air. The air there is like nothing else in the world; the scent of ponderosas rules the drive up to the park. It was with a sense of excitement that we made our way to the park, and we started off our trip by hiking Morro Rock, a trail which comprised of 400 stairs to the top of the rock. For my mom and I, it was the first time this year we had hiked at elevation, so it was a bit of a rude awakening. However, the view from the rock was magnificent, and was well worth the hike. That same day we hiked to General Sherman, the largest tree in the world. It seemed strange that such a large tree could exist; it looked like something out of an alien world. By this time, the holiday crowds had cleared out and so we took the Congress Trail among the other sequoias. It was dusk, and the sunlight started to filter between the giant trees. There was the sensation of having been shrunk; as if we had replaced the beetles and ants and merely crawled along in the shadows of the mighty sequoias. The next day we hiked up to the Little Baldy mountaintop, our first early morning hike as a family. We arrived at the trailhead early, as to avoid the crowds and the heat. Midway through the hike, my lowland-loving hide was gasping for breath during the 700-foot elevation gain over 1.7 miles. However, the view from the top of the mountain was gorgeous; the panoramic of the surrounding lands was breathtaking. We were the only ones up there, and you could feel the encroaching quiet pressing down on your eardrums, a remanent of this landscape centuries before the settlers. Overall, this park was a great one to get back into the rhythm of camping, and to appreciate the riches of the nature around us.
