Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park Exploration

Reaching, reaching the forests of America, reaching from the Atlantic to the shining Pacific on eastern reaches of California. stands a 400 mile upthrust of sawtooth, snow blunted peaks pricking the sky. These are the Sierra Nevadas. Marked out in the range of southern end are two national treasures. Sequoia, an old timer dating back to 1890, and Kings Canyon, a youngster inducted into the park system in 1940.

They're back to back two separate parks, which in many ways are administered as a single unit. On the swath of land stretching from the foothills of the San Joaquin Valley to the eastern crest of the Sierra Nevadas, these two national parks stand in tandem almost twins, yet each distinctly its own. As a painter may color dawn or dusk from the same palette, the words of poet Mark Strand are equally true for these two national parks, Sequoia and Kings Canyon. Sunlight filters down through shades of greenish gray to an almost smoky dark. The forest floor is covered with a soft carpet of ferns, a quiet, different from the quiet of the outside world, insinuates itself, like the quiet one imagines at the center of sleep.

Sequoia, America's second oldest national park, centers around a forest of giant trees that have given it its name. The half million acres of King's Canyon plunge into one of the deepest canyons in the US, deeper than Grand Canyon. Sharing a common boundary, both parks look, indeed are, what the Sierra Nevada was before the coming of European conquerors and American settlers. Both are home to native wildlife. Both parks are an almost roadless wilderness, accessible only by foot or on horseback.

These two parks are laced with rushing snow fed water. Both are blessed with groves of sequoias, the largest most massive forms of life on the face of the earth. Sequoia national park is the home of the 2100 year old 2.7 million pound General Sherman tree. This magnificent sequoia is one of the oldest living things on earth. Giant forest is 3,700 feet up, and it's a steep climb fraught with twists and turns and hairpin curves to get to it.

Here you can venture inside a huge tree. Sequoia trees can survive a fire that even burns their heart out. Here a 275 foot tall sequoia had fallen due to natural causes across a road. A tunnel has been bored through the tree to make the road passable. You can visit another tree here in Kings Canyon.

The Fallen Monarch. This thousand year old sequoia has served as a native American shelter, in 1870 a hotel and saloon, and even a US cavalry stable for 32 horses. But these parks offer even more than the great trees. There's Mount Whitney the highest peak in the contiguous United States, Crystal Cave, a fantasy of stalactites and stalagmites, a huge granite dome called Moro Rock. If you can climb the 500 steps to the top, you're rewarded with a spectacular view of the great Western Divide.

Camping and backpacking and in Kings Canyon makes for a high country exhilaration. The cool clean air is like wine. Sharing the bracing effervescent Sierra atmosphere, guarding the giants of the tree world and intertwined by trails, these two parks, their are differences complementing each other, thrive in tandem offering a more rewarding experience for the park visitor.