April 8th: Sequoia National Park Foothills

We’re now at the town of Visalia, with nothing much to commend it except it’s convenient for the Sequoia National Park. Poor old Visalia- it just has no personality, but isn’t grotty or unpleasant. This is a dead flat agricultural area and the mountains start about 40 miles away where the Park begins.

We’ve hired a car for a few days because the Park roads have hairpin bends and climb way up, so it’s not motorhome territory. The problem today is that it rained all day yesterday, and rain lowdown = snow on the mountains. But we decide to go anyway. At the entry lodge the ranger tells us only vehicles with snow chains can go right up, but we (without snow chains) can go up to 3,000 feet.

It’s a really picturesque drive, following above a rocky river. One huge boulder lies on its side near the road, the perfect photo opportunity if you want to stand on the top. We didn’t fancy a snap of one of us tumbling off it, so we took the sure-footed youngsters posing instead.

Our travel limit was Hospital Rock where there was a big carpark and picnic facilities like benches and barbie firepits. Hospital Rock was named after an adventurer whose wound had been tended by local Indians who cured it in rapid time. The Indians are long gone. The place had been a major settlement where evidence still remains of their activities. These rock paintings, for instance. The experts aren’t too sure what the symbols mean. 

Near the rock art is a boulder with smooth holes. The Indian women ground down acorns in these holes to make flour. Acorns were their staple diet. You can’t imagine, when we have so much choice in food today, living off so little variety. 

We walked a short trail from Hospital Rock along by the river, passing through a campground for tents only. Many of these campers would be backpackers since the Park has many miles of remote trails, and when you leave the vicinity of the one tarmac road that we are using, it is a real wilderness. This is emphasised by the brown boxes you can see between the trees. These are for the campers to store food in, all of their food, because the metal containers are bear-proof. Notices all over the Park describe how to deal with bears. My advice would be to make sure your smartphone or iPlayer has the song “Teddy Bears Picnic” loaded, and play it at full volume. Guaranteed to put them in a friendly mood. There are also mountain lion here, as well as the usual nasties like rattlesnakes.

Beyond the tents were some lovely unspoiled scenes although we weren’t that far into the outback, but we could still pretend we were explorers from a past age. But we didn’t see any bears or mountain lion, or get an arrow through either of our hats.