The Quest for General Sherman

So, to preface this post, I am in no way an "outdoorsy/nature" girl. I don't hike. I don't camp. And, my idea of roughing it is having to stay at a Holiday Inn. However, when you've been hearing the same presentation all day long for 3 days in a row, and when you're eating Mexican food for lunch and dinner daily, ANYTHING sounds more exciting than that.

Oh, BTW, I'm in California this week, for those who didn't already know.

Anyway, so there was talk of driving over to see the Sequoia National Forest, and I'm thinking "Road Trip"!!! Yeah, let's go! It will be like old times in college (except with coworkers), but still, it should provide some excitement, right?

So, it should take "about an hour" to get there, so we were told. Well, that may have been accurate, but it was an hour to the ranger station. NOONE cared to tell us that the trees were then 17 miles up to the elevation of 6000ft on curvy mountain roads.

About 1/2 up this mountain is when we started asking, "how much farther"? So, we pull out the map which says about 10 more miles. Fine, we thought. We'll be there soon (since we were yet to the curvy roads). So, we were all making it fine, having fun, and then that all changed. We suddenly started climbing very steep roads with no railings on the outside of the roads. I swear, I was terrified!! And, the guy driving was FLYING around the mountain. (Ok, he may have been going 10-15mph, but it felt more like 60mph).

This was about the time when I started saying "I want to go back". Well, being "almost there", we trudged on. I'd like to note here that never before in my life had I seen curvy road signs that looked like an upside down U. YEAH, there were plenty of those on this journey.

So, after about an hour since entering the park, we finally arrive at the huge sequoia trees. YEAH! We can finally get out of the car, and we've reached our destination. So, we start looking around for the General Sherman tree. This tree is the oldest living tree in the world, and it's base is 40ft in diameter. So, how is it that we couldn't see the tree??

WELL, AGAIN, what noone told us was that "once you reach the area, you then have to hike 0.5 mile to the tree". Right. It was getting dark, it was 35 degrees, and I was the only one with a coat. There were signs everywhere to "be friendly to the bears". What little courage I had left from what I'd already experienced to reach the tree area was then diminished. The last thing I wanted to do was go on a hike and become bear food.

But, off we went. I must say, it was worth it. This tree was amazing, truly breath-taking. We all had a lot of fun taking pictures (which I'll have to post later). But, man, had I know all that it would take to experience this, I don't know if I would have been up for the challenge.

Oh, and just to make the experience even better, on the way down the crazy, curvy, mountain, I started feeling sick. Great! We were at least 2 hours from the hotel, and I knew at least an hour of that was going to be stuck on this mountain. Needless to say, I know understand why dogs hang their heads out of the windows. There's just something refreshing about fresh wind in your face. Thankfully, we managed to make it back down the mountain and back to the hotel without anyone actually getting sick. But, it was a rough go for about an hour there!

Just had to share my experience.

It is Friday yet? I miss my family and want to be home :(.