Beginning near the end

Here I am back in Everyday Land ... but the Time Before Now involved an Excellent Adventure on Another Continent.

Yes I know I was going to write and post and add photos en route ... just think of this as a timey wimey thing ...

... here we are in the Sequoia National Park ... well that's me, and can you see some small patches of white near the trunk of the tree? That's snow. The air was crisp and very fresh as we strolled down

a mile long and very well kept footpath/trail, on our way to see the largest living thing - the General Sherman Tree.

These two trees, huge and very old, were so beautifully incorporated into the trail.The blackened gap in the trunk beside me was an opening I could stand in. And don't you love the moss on the mere saplings behind them - huge trees in their own right!

The General Sherman is not as tall as the Redwoods we saw further north, but it is vast and huge and growing wider every year ...

Here's some handy facts:
It's 2,200 years old. The base is 11 metres wide (36.5 ft) and its 31 metres in circumference (103 ft) and weighs a whopping 1,385 tones! And I love this from one of the helpful information posters on the trail - if you could fill the trunk with water, you could have 9,844 baths - one every day for 27 years!

It was a steep hike back up to the car park,so it was great to have lots of rustic wooden benches to rest on.The trail winds past other huge and ancient trees. With the snow, the forest had a magical feel. The Sequoias have such amazing chestnut coloured bark that almost doesn't look real. We saw a few forest critters, little squirrel/chipmunk creatures and tiny birds, enjoying the mountain spring and splashes of sunlight, quite unconcerned about the waves of humans wandering through their forest.