On Friday, September 20th, I packed up my trailer and headed for Death Valley National Park, about 30 miles south of Ash Meadows, but when I got there, I decided that I was tired of the desert and so I kept driving. The drive through Death Valley is something like 80 or 100 miles and I just kept driving! The road started to get curvey and hilly as I drove north until I could see the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the distance - snow still on the peaks - trees on the mountainsides! I didn't have a plan, I just kept driving until the road ended and I had to decide - north or south? I got gas and looked at my map. I decided that north looked good, so I drove north for a while, but then I changed my mind, turned around and went south....toward Sequoia National Forest.
About two hours later I started getting tired so I stopped and looked at my map again. It looked like there might be campgrounds at Lake Isabella, so that is where I headed. As I approached the southern part of the lake, I could see trailers, tents and motorhomes parked right on the beach! I pulled into a "campground" near the dam. There was no ranger on duty in the guard house, no campground hosts parked in the designated campsite, no roads or campsites either! I pulled onto the sand, parked my truck and took a walk down the beach wishing I would have brought my kayak, lawn chair and firewood!
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| The 'road' to Lake Isabella |
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| My truck and trailer in the "campground" at Lake Isabella. |
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| Sunset at Lake Isabella |
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| I've arrived! |
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| I've parked my truck and trailer and walked across the road to the trailhead. |
I parked at the South Entrance, but then I saw that there was a campground at the north entrance, so I went there to see if I could camp there for the night.
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| Take a walk with me on the Trail of 100 Giants!! No captions are needed! |
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| I took photographs of the signs along the trail, so I could share them with you. All of the signs had two brown metal circles in the middle of them. I'm not sure what their purpose is. Many of the signs also had graffiti scrawled on them. |
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| The tree behind the sign about President Clinton. |
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| Thorny bushes along the trail which mammals rub against to dislodge ticks and fleas. |
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The wolf lichen that grows on the trunks of white fir trees.
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| The actual root ball of the giant sequoia tree. |
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| Some men on the other side of the root ball to give you a sense of the size of the root ball! |
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| These flowers were about 1/4 inch across. They looked like little straw flowers! |
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| Beautiful flowers, green plants and rocks along the trail. |
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| The bottom of the three giant Sequoias grew together over a span of hundreds of years! |
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| A chipmunk having a snack of the stump of a tree. |
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| Can you see the person through the whole in the truck of the giant sequoia |
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| Looking up at the tops of the "Goose Pen" trees |
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| The tree with the "bench." |
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| The bark of a giant sequoia tree. |
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| An adult taking a photograph of a child leaning on the giant sequoia |
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| Can you see the young boy standing between the trees? |
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| I was lucky enough to get a campsite in this campground on the north end of the Trail of 100 Giants. |
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| My campsite! It's a good thing that my trailer is very short because otherwise I would not have been able to stay at this campground! The campground also had yurts to rent for overnight stays. Neither campsite, or yurt, had electricity, or water. The "bathrooms" were outhouses, no water, or showers, but it was across from the Trail of 100 Giants, so I was happy! |
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| A better look at the yurt. |
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| I couldn't believe that there were Columbine flowering along the trail because in Illinois Columbine is a Spring flower. |
A campfire to end the day.
