Sequoia National Park

Happy Monday Everyone!!

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We are SO excited to kick off the week with our latest travel destination, SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK! Traveling to Mammoth during the winter really sparked the idea for us to travel to another snowy destination. Scott and I have been to the Sequoias before, but not on a photography trip like we usually do. We set out to spend 3 days exploring the park and spend 3 nights right outside the park in a town called Three Rivers. As we were preparing for the trip, we saw that it was supposed to snow the night we were driving into the Sequoias. We were cautious about it, because we didn’t want to drive in hazardous conditions, i.e. driving on black ice. Thursday evening, we were extremely eager to get up at 2am to embark on our journey, we went to bed and set our alarms, but when we woke up, we saw road closures on the highways where we would be driving..so we made a decision to leave in the morning when the sun came up. Fast Forward to 10am, we are all set and ready to go in the car! Our whole driving time took us about 5 hours and we arrived in Three Rivers at around 3pm. We tried to check into our hotel, the Comfort Inn, but we were denied and said we had to wait another hour, LOL. So we headed up the mountain to check out the park first! If you have never been to the Sequoias before, something to know is that you have to go up a very windy mountain to get there, so it can make you feel car sick very easily. It was pretty cloudy down in Three Rivers and as we got higher up it got even more foggy, it was a very beautiful haunting kind of fog that filled the air. We got to the entrance of the park, paid our fees, and got a park map 🙂 There was a big sign at the entrance warning visitors that they needed chains in order to make it all the way to the top, and we were prepared with chains of our own to make the trip all the way up. As we were driving up the windy roads, it suddenly started to rain big, big drops, and then minutes later the rain turned into snow flakes! Big thick pieces of snow were slowly falling from the sky, it was like nothing we had ever seen before 🙂 As we got higher, the snow got thicker on the trees around us and on the road. We got to an area where we could put the chains on safely and Scott was tasked with the mission of actually getting the chains onto the tires. We had a little trouble the first time, but Scott was successful after about 25 minutes of trying, LOL! We continued to head up the mountain for another 15 minutes before we finally made it! Flat ground, covered in snow, giant sequoias with piles of snow stacked on the branches, it looked like we were entering a winter wonderland…

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We turned off the road into the Giant Forest to take it all in. It really was like we had entered another world, the snow was still falling steadily and everything was white. The snow was so fresh and powdery, no footprints were anywhere in sight, it was such a wonderful sight to see. We took some videos and photos, but looking back at them, they don’t even come close to capturing the magic we felt being there in person.

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By this time, it was 4:15ish, and the sun would be going down shortly, we were a little nervous to drive down the mountain with all the ice and snow on the road, so we wanted to make sure we still had daylight to make us feel a little more confident. We thought we might be able to catch a cool sunset somewhere on our way down the mountain so we decided to make our way back. Getting back in the car and driving down the mountain wasn’t as scary as we thought it would be…but we were still very cautious!! Living in Southern California our whole lives, we were NOT used to these kind of weather conditions 😛 We got to a spot that was about halfway down the mountain where a lookout was, that had a really nice view of the clouds and mountains in the distance. We watched the sun go down and admired the bright pink colors of the sky turn to a stunning orange, it was such a vibrant sunset.

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We got back in the car, and didn’t get out until we had arrived at our motel. We checked in, and unloaded the car, once we were settled in the room we decided to look for some food to pick up. There was a Mexican restaurant not far from our motel, so we chose that spot and enjoyed our meals in bed back in our room 🙂 We were super stoked about all the snow we saw that day, and were so excited to go back the next day, but for now all we wanted to do was get some sleep.

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We woke up at 6am, and left by 6:30 so we could get our morning pictures up in the park. We stopped at a popular lookout area about halfway up the mountain to take some pictures with the early morning light. The roads were lit so beautifully and fresh snow everywhere made it super photogenic.

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We stopped at a few other spots that just also caught our eye while driving up the mountain. Being that it was still early in the morning, we didn’t run into many other cars on the road. We continued on, and made it to a point where we had to put the chains on again, Scotts favorite 😉 Once we were all situated, we entered the flat top of the mountain, although it wasn’t snowing anymore, the aftermath of snow from the day before left the park more beautiful than ever. We pulled into the giant forest again so we could park the car and use the restroom. It was still fairly early in the morning, so we had a snack for our breakfast, good old hummus and pita bread 🙂 Something that was kinda cool/funny was watching the snow fall off the giant Sequoia trees. Randomly, this would happen about every 5 seconds. A giant pile of snow would plummet down, drenching anyone or anything with an overwhelming amount of snow.

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As I sat in the car with my hummus and pita waiting for Scott to return, a ginormous thump hit my car scaring me. After we got some grub, we looked at our map to see where we should go to next, Big Tree Trail was right by us so we headed there. Big Tree Trail was very familiar to us, because the last time we had visited the Sequoias, we took a lot of pictures there at “Round Meadow.” One of the more photogenic giant sequoia trees is located there and you can actually go inside of it which is pretty awesome. This time however, we noticed signs that said not to disturb the wildlife so we didn’t go, but it didn’t stop us from taking lots of pictures of the snow covered meadow.

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The snow was super thick here so we didn’t go too far because Scott didn’t have the proper shoes to explore in 😉 *Van Boyz for life*. After we took pictures, we headed back to the car and decided to check out General Sherman. If you don’t know who General Sherman is, you would be surprised it isn’t a person at all but a tree! It is the largest sequoia tree in the park! With a height of 275′ 0″ and a total weight of 4.188783 million lbs. It is the world’s largest tree ever recorded (by volume that is). We parked the car and got out to search for General Sherman, even though Scott and I had been to the park before, we had never seen this specific tree in person. We followed a trail that was a very nice, brisk walk through the snow. Not very many people were there, so it was nice not having a bunch of crowds everywhere.

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We vlogged our whole experience, seeing the tree and just goofing off around the trail, we had a lot of fun here. As we were walking back to the car, we had the idea to just go as far as we could on the road to see where the road was closed off. During the winter, only about half of the park is open, so we couldn’t enter into Kings Canyon which is another national park connected to the Sequoias. We drove down till we hit Wolverton, an area where families could go sledding. This area didn’t do much for me, and I wasn’t that interested in exploring it. We stopped at a parking area to take a break from driving and munch on some kettle chips 🙂 After our little break, we decided to just drive and stop at areas we thought we were cool to take pictures at, this was a little harder than earlier in the day, because many more people were in the park at this time. We did find some cool areas that we explored for a little, one of which we “believe” we saw bear tracks at..

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We took a road that we thought would lead us to the road closure, but on the way we saw a lodge and thought maybe we could get some lunch there. Lodge Pole was the name of rest stop, and we went inside to discover that there wasn’t any lunch type food there, but there was a cool rock stand where I bought a Mica rock 🙂 We continued on the road until we got to the road closure, we had gone as far as we could. At this time, I decided it was time for a nap. Scott continued to drive around and take pictures while I was sleeping in the car LOL. As I woke up, Scott let me know he was making his way back to the Giant Forest so he could use the bathroom. Once we got there, we saw just how many other people were in the park too, lots and lots of families had arrived and we were in a sea of cars. We parked the car and thought, why don’t we check out the Giant Forest Museum? The museum is a small building with a bunch of fun filled facts and artifacts displaying information about the history of the park and how the Sequoias grow. After our learning session, we thought of going back to Round Meadow to walk along the Big Tree Trail to kill some time. Many, many more people were in this area than before and trying to find a parking spot was a mission, but we got lucky and got one within the first 5 minutes. We started our walk, and were taken back by how beautiful the meadow was. As I said from earlier in the day, the snow was very thick here, so we didn’t go off the trail too much because it was about knee deep. We took lots of pictures on our little hike, and enjoyed the views of the giant Sequoias that surrounded us.

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As we were walking back to the car, Scott mentioned that he had a good idea on where to be for the sunset in the Giant Forest. He had seen an area to the left of the parking lot, which lead to a trail that had an unbelievable view of the mountains in the distance. We still had about an hour until the sun was going to set, so we chilled in the car listening to music until we were ready to head back out into the snow to set up a spot for the sunset. The spot we chose to camp out at was pretty awesome, there some giant rocks that lead up to the edge of the mountain, creating a large clearing where you could get an uninterrupted view of the sunsetting in the distance. The layers of mountains in the foreground provided an amazing canvas for the sun to paint the colors of the sunset onto.

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After we were satisfied with the sunset pictures, we headed back to the car to make our way back down the mountain. Again, going down the mountain, we were super cautious, but we had finally got the hang of driving in the snow, so it wasn’t that scary anymore 🙂 The total time traveling all the way back down the mountain and back into Three Rivers was a solid hour, so by the time we got back down we were STARVING!! We went straight to a pizza place once we were back, Scott and I had some Alfredo pasta which wasn’t the best 🙁 It had been a long day, but a very successful one shooting wise. We were both extremely happy with everything we had shot and captured. We headed back to the motel to review all the footage from the last 2 days and decide what else we needed on our last day in the Sequoias.

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Sunday morning, we were excited because we had planned on waking up and getting a free breakfast in the lobby 🙂 one of the perks of staying at the Comfort Inn LOL. We got our free breakfast, then went back to the room to get ready and pack all our stuff to load back in the car. Once that task was done and we were all ready to go, we returned the motel keys and headed back up the mountain for the last time! Putting the chains on this day was the hardest day for Scott, he was not a happy camper, LOL. We noticed that since it hadn’t snowed since the first day we got there, the snow had melted a lot on the drive up, and putting on chains wasn’t necessary until just before we entered the flat, top area. Our first stop once we were officially in the park was, of course, the Giant Forest. We wanted to explore the area where we had taken sunset pictures a little more and see where it lead to.

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We wrapped around a hiking trail and followed it for a little bit, taking videos and pictures along the way. Scott got a little spooked, because we were the only people out there and he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye, which scared me, and THEN he saw tracks in the snow that were HUGE so we were convinced a bear was nearby..LOL. We headed back to the car to make sure we weren’t going to die. We wanted to check out an area we hadn’t seen before, but it was a challenge because we had already been to almost every place we could see. Scott had an idea to walk around, near the museum, and follow a walking trail that connected to Round Meadow. We thought we could get some more video footage over there, so we made our way to the museum across the way. We started our walk and were very pleased with this trail, it had a really nice walk way that was up on the hill higher than the road below. We walked along the trail, taking pics and videos and loving the atmosphere, patches of light came out from the trees making it a great spot for photography.

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We got the last of the shots we needed and started our walk back to the car. Once we got to the car, we had a little snack and had our last vlog up on the mountain, we were ready to embark on our journey home. This trip that we went on was so great and so much fun, we loved being caught in a snow blizzard and taking pictures of big, beautiful Sequoia trees. We hope you enjoyed this write up and all the pictures from the trip! We will catch up with you all next week with a super cool announcement we can’t wait to share!! Have a wonderful week and enjoy the rest of the photos from the trip below!