Day 14: Bakersfield - Sequoia Nat. Park - Oakhurst 

After a quick free breakfast (pre-packed donuts), we took highway 99 to Visalia and followed the signs to Sequoia National Park.
This national park is the home of the biggest living thing in the world; the General Sherman Tree. This tree is between 2,300 and 2,700 years old. Its largest branch is almost 7 feet in diameter.

The road between Visalia and the park entrance was long and winding. The landscape was lovely, with lots of orange and lemon trees. 

When we entered the park the park ranger told us the road was closed after Lodgepole, because of snowfall. That was quite a disappointment for us, because now we wouldn't be able to visit Kings Canyon. He also told us, that the road to the Sequoia trees was only open for 15 minutes per hour, because of road works.

We waited for a while and at exactly twelve o'clock we were able to drive further.
The road was steep and after a half hours drive we were up 3.000 feet and in the snow.
We parked the car and visited the giant sequoia trees. These trees are absolutely fantastic. They are enormous, almost unbelievable, and with this amount of snow they looked even more special.
We tried to take photos of the trees, but it was very difficult because of their height. We met some friendly people and they were good enough to take photos of us in front of the General Sherman Tree.

We walked back to the car and followed the road to Lodgepole. There was even more snow and the snow walls were very high.

In Lodgepole there is a campground (not open in winter), a (very expensive) store and a little museum. We visited the museum and read about the history of the Sequoia trees and were even more impressed. The sequoia trees are located only in this area, and have outlived hundreds of fires.

We really enjoyed this park, although it is not very accessible in wintertime. It wasn't possible for us to follow trails because of the snow, yet it still took us half a day to visit.

Later, we drove back down to the park exit and drove on toward Oakhurst. In Visalia we took the interstate to Fresno and from there we took highway 41 directly to Oakhurst.
The landscape was great and made this drive most enjoyable.

When we entered Oakhurst our hotel was very easy to find. The hotel itself looked fairly new and the room was just fine, except that it was a smoking room.
We decided to use the small pool, but the water was too cold. Linda and I didn't want to go into this cold water and used the hot tub instead, which was very hot.

Before dinner, we drove into the lovely looking village, it was the first village which looked as we had expected these kind of villages to look. Oakhurst is located in the woods of Yosemite National Park and is really quiet. When we checked out the village, we even spotted some deers.

There were only a few restaurants and we decided to have Italian food. The restaurant was quite nice and the food was ok.

This day had been quite pleasant and there were some great things to see. Yosemite National Park is on the program for tomorrow.

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