After driving the long, winding road from Riverbend RV Park again, our first stop was the Lodgepole Visitor Center. It was as busy and crowded on Saturday as online posts warned us it would be. (But at least the weather was decent. I’ll take crowded and dry over empty and rainy/snowy any day!) We were super blessed to get a parking space in the visitor center lot on the first try! When I talked to the ranger at the information desk, to make sure Moro Rock Road was closed to private vehicles and that we would need to take a shuttle to it, she told us that since we were lucky enough to find parking near a shuttle stop, we should stay parked there all day. We took her advice and were so glad we didn’t have to deal with trying to find parking at multiple locations — I can’t imagine what mid-summer looks like.
After a short wait to catch a shuttle, we went to see the famous Sequoia named General Sherman. It, along with others, was on an easy, paved 1 mile trail. We waited in the line for about 5 minutes, without it moving much at all, then decided to get someone to take our pic on the backside of it instead! Same tree, no line!! I’m not sure why someone in charge hasn’t thought to add one or two more “General Sherman” signs around the tree to spread out the people waiting to take pics, but we were fine with a photo sans sign. General Sherman is the largest tree by volume in the world, at 275 feet tall and with a 36-foot wide diameter at its base. And now we seen it in person!
Even though Congress Trail is a popular 3 mile hike to do here, we decided we had seen enough Sequoias to satisfy us and passed on doing it. I’m sure it would have been cool, but with limited time and energy, we chose to save our energy to hike the longer Tokopah Falls trail later.
The next shuttle stop was the Giant Forest Museum, which is where we needed to transfer to a different shuttle line to get to Moro Rock. While we were there, we went across the road and climbed around on Beetle Rock for a bit, then ate our picnic lunch while enjoying the awesome view! Before hopping on the next shuttle, we popped into the Museum and read a few exhibits. When we were done, a Moro Rock shuttle was waiting, yay!
Moro Rock was definitely a highlight in Sequoia! We climbed over 350 steps, for a 183 ft elevation gain, up to the very top of the huge granite dome. I took a couple of breathers on the way up and Randy’s watch warned him that his heart rate was too fast, but the climb was worth it! At the top, we were rewarded with stunning 360-degree views of the park and the Great Western Divide Peaks. It was up and back via narrow paths and stairs on the edge of the dome, so we had to wait in spots for people going the other direction to pass by, but it wasn’t terrible, especially since it allowed for taking a break and looking around. After getting our photo at the very edge, we hung around in a wider area before starting the trek back down.
No problem getting back on the shuttle, with its next stop at Tunnel Log. But we were warned if we got off, we take the risk of the next shuttle being full and having to wait a while to get back on. Enough other people got off, though, that we were able to get off quick, take a picture of the Tunnel Log then get in the line to get back on the same shuttle. It was on the road that they close off to private vehicles on the weekends, so that Shuttles can safely use the narrow road. If we could have visited on a week day, we would’ve been able to drive our truck through the log. It was created through a fallen tree in 1937 and is 17′ wide and 8′ tall. A fun little novelty thing to do.
We almost skipped getting off at the last stop, Crescent Meadows hike, since we still wanted to do Tokopah Falls and it was around 3:30pm. We decided to just walk on the trail for a few minutes to get a feel for the area, without doing the entire 1.8 mile loop. And we’re glad we did!! Just a short way onto the trail, we saw a bunch of people pointing their cameras in the same direction, so we knew there was something special to see there! It was a bear and her cub hanging around across the meadow. The rangers actually had the trail closed off, since it got too close to the bears at some point. We hung around for about 30 minutes, watching the cub climb up and down the tree, the mamma walking back and forth on a log and them pawing at each other a little bit, too. Super cute and fun to see!
While waiting around for the bears to entertain us, I saw someone staring at the ground intently, so went over to see what was there. It was tiny little snake slithering around. I thought too late that I should’ve put my hand in the pic for scale (I didn’t have a banana with me), but if I had to guess, it was about 6 or 7 inches long — tiny! Then as we were leaving, we saw a few deer cross our path and jump over a log, so that was cool, too. We had commented how little wildlife we had seen so far in all the parks, but I guess this one stop makes up for that!
We took the shuttle back to the museum then transferred to one to take us to the Lodgepole area. We had to wait about 15 minutes for that last shuttle to arrive, but overall, I feel like the shuttle was well worth doing! We got off at the Lodgepole Campground stop around 5pm, which was right next to the Tokopah Falls Trailhead.
We were tired and it was getting late, but the Tokopah Falls trail was definitely wroth doing! It was 3.8 miles out-and-back with a 626 ft elevation gain (and it felt like most of that was at the end — it was tough for my tired legs.) The trail follows along the Kaweah River by large boulders, across creeks, meadows, and tall pines. The falls are 1200 feet high. We enjoyed the top for about 20 minutes (I rested and Randy climbed around on the rocks around the falls) then hiked back. In hindsight, we should have gotten off at the Visitor Center shuttle stop then drove the truck to the Campground, since there was parking available by that time. Since the shuttle was no longer running when we got back to the trailhead, we had to walk an extra quarter mile or so to the visitor center. But we made it and were glad to have experienced the hike and falls. Randy grabbed a grab-and-go sandwich and I had some snacks, so we headed home and ate “dinner” in the truck.
Randy decided to drive out the south exit station, which added almost 30 minutes to our drive back to the RV, but went past a few other popular places we hadn’t seen yet. Plus, we had already driven the other road three times. We saw the Four Guardsmen, Tunnel Rock and the historical Indian Head Sequoia National Park sign, which was carved from the wood of a fallen sequoia in 1935. Plus, we stopped at a couple of overlooks for sunset pictures. Another great day visiting National Parks!
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