The tree above (distorted as this is my first attempt at a multiple-photograph panorama shot) is General Grant, a sequoia, that is one of the three largest trees in the world.
We made it to Fresno at last. Once we got on the replacement plane, the trip was uneventful, though we did end up arriving in Fresno around midnight, almost too exhausted to sleep.
My first impression of Fresno is that it’s flat. Extremely flat. However, today, after breakfast, Wendell, Judy piled the kids, Erin and I into the car and headed east, and before long we had gone from near sea level to 6000 feet above it. At General Grant National Park, Erin and I saw our first live sequoias.
These aren’t the trees which have had highway lanes built through them (that’s Yosemite, I believe, also nearby), but they’re still big, and General Grant is one of the biggest in the world. More impressive to me, however, were the fallen sequoias, some of which had been hollowed out. People have lived in these. We walked through these.
The kids themselves were suitably impressed (Vivian moreso than Nora; Nora was tired), and Vivian was quite happy climbing around the things she was allowed to climb on, as you can see from the photo collection here.
