Posts Tagged “bears”

Note: I’m giving Isabel a break from the blog tonight. She’s done the lion’s share of writing up to this point and she deserves a night off. Any and all typos, factual errors, exaggerations, mistakes, fabrications, or other general sloppiness should be blamed on me.

Since we didn’t get into San Francisco until late last night, we thought we’d give it another pass this morning before heading back east. I’ve never been there before, so I wanted to just get a quick taste of it… something to hold me over until we can come back for a proper visit. We decided to hit all of the obvious spots:

Golden Gate Bridge

Alcatraz

Lombard Street

TransAmerica Building

The thing I will remember most, though, is an unintentional turn we took down Filbert Street.

I know it doesn’t convey in the picture, but the hill is so steep, you can’t see the road below us. It was much like being on a rollercoaster, but way scarier. Luckily we had the breaks checked on Pearl before the trip.

Once I got my fill of the city, we were on the road again. This part of California is dry. Really dry.

My aunt Ginny said that they haven’t had rain since March, and that it was typical. Yikes.

After several hours on the road, we reached the base of the Sequoia National Forest.

While it’s not quite as steep or windy as Rt 1, the road into the park is not for the meek. Many, many switchbacks and S-curves are your payment (along with the $20 entrance fee) to see some of the most amazing forests you will ever see. Oh, and also wildlife. Isabel and I had yet another encounter. As you may recall, we’ve already seen deer, antelope, bison, elk, moose, seals, and pelicans. Now we can add bears to the list. Are you kidding me? Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would actually be in a situation where I was within a few feet of a wild bear–or two.

We have been having a healthy debate over whether these were two baby bears or a mother and her cub. Anyone out there with an expert opinion (ahem, Kenton) should feel free to chime in.

As if we’re not feeling skittish enough from our death-defying drive up the mountain, or our harrowing encounter with vicious (and adorable) man-eating bears, now it turns out that the mountain is on fire.

We passed a sign that warned us of “Smoke Ahead” and then saw that there were about 4 guys working on the situation… we felt pretty confident that they had it under control, so we moved on to the main attraction of the day: the General Sherman.

(Isabel is making me own up to the slight distortion above. We actually saw the smoke BEFORE we saw the cuddly, angry bears. I just think it works better, narratively, the way I wrote it. She’s such a stickler for the facts.)

Not only is the General Sherman the biggest tree in the world, it is the largest living thing on this planet.* Its measurements are: 274 feet high, 36 feet across its base, and has a total trunk volume of over 52,000 cubic feet. Whew. Plus, it’s top-heavy. The park ranger told us that the biggest danger to the sequoias is their weight. They don’t taper like most trees, and they hold most of their weight higher in the tree, so sometimes they just fall over. We were hoping that General Sherman wouldn’t choose this evening to decide that he was tired of standing. He didn’t disappoint.

Then the sun went down…

…and chaos reigned. Out of nowhere, we saw a bright flash of light and then the loud boom of thunder. Uh oh. We raced up the steep trail to try to make it to the car before the rain hit. More lighting, more thunder. Isabel nearly had an asthma attack due to the high elevation (the air is thinner at 7000 feet above sea level). Then, about half way up the trail, the rain hit. We didn’t get drenched, but we weren’t completely dry either. We finally made it back to the car and began the two hour journey down the other side of the mountain. Another great day was over.

*factoid taken from the back of a postcard, so it must be true.