We spent last weekend among the giant sequoia trees of Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Saturday was cold and rainy/snowy, so we set up camp and took a short walk through the North Grove. We then warmed up in the visitor center while watching a slide show about the history of the trees. When they were first discovered, one of the trees had the first 100 ft of its bark stripped and shipped to New York. It was reassembled there to prove to the general public that the tales of the giant trees were true. Of course, this killed the tree. It is still standing, but it is minus its bark and quite fire scarred and dead. Sigh.
Sunday dawned sunny and warmer, so we strapped on our skis for a slightly longer ski up to a viewpoint overlooking the Dardanelles. Then it was lunch at the Snowshoe Brewing Company in Arnold and back home. It was a nice weekend and I was glad to finally get to Calaveras Big Trees.
Another sad thing was that the people on the east coast thought that the bark was a fake and that no tree could be that big.