Sequoia National Park, Yosemite’s Southern Neighbor
Just a half-day's drive south of Yosemite, Sequoia National Park is not to be missed.
In Sequoia National Park, wander among the largest living trees on the planet in the Giant Forest, go underground into eerily beautiful limestone and marble caves, hike past wildflower meadows, and splash around meandering rivers and glistening lakes during summer. Even if you’ve already seen Yosemite, the neighboring Sequoia National Park matches its sights and more with fewer park visitors.
If you only have a day to spare, this park is worth the detour, especially because they receive only 10 percent of the annual visitors that Yosemite does. Spending a few days here gives you even more solitude and time to explore the wonders of the southern Sierra Nevada.
NOTE: Winter storms caused major damage to Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks in 2023. Many areas of the parks will be inaccessible throughout summer 2023. Check what’s open at nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/conditions.htm.
As you might have already guessed from its name, this park is famous most of all for its giant sequoia trees. The granddaddy of them all is the General Sherman Tree, thought to be over 2000 years old and measuring over 275 feet tall and 100 feet around its trunk.
To really get a sense for how enormous these giant trees are, you can take a walk through the Giant Forest after letting your kids discover the hands-on, interactive displays inside the free museum or joining a family-oriented nature activity program over at the Beetle Rock Nature Center across the road.
From the museum, a side road leads out to Crescent Meadow, where you may catch sight of black bears foraging for berries and acorns, and past a drive-through giant sequoia tree on its way out to Moro Rock, where a giant staircase leads to uplifting vistas of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Just north of the Giant Forest, Lodgepole Village has a helpful park visitor center that sells first-come, first-served tickets for guided tours of splendid Crystal Cave. This underground cave is stuffed with stalactites, stalagmites, and other calcite formations, as well as diverse wildlife, with some tiny, mostly invertebrate species found here that exist nowhere else in the world.
South of the Giant Forest, the Generals Highway descends like a roller coaster into the Sierra Nevada foothills area of the park, where you can visit Native American archaeological sites and hike to summertime swimming holes in the Kaweah River basin. Beyond the park’s Foothills Entrance Station, a narrow, rugged 25-mile side road doggedly climbs to the 19th-century mining settlement of Mineral King, with its epic panoramas of Sierra Nevada peaks all around.
For more information:
Majestic Mountain Loop
(559) 683-4636
MajesticMountainLoop.com
Visalia Convention & Visitors Bureau
(559) 334-0141
www.visitvisalia.org
Visit Yosemite | Madera County
(559) 683-4636
www.yosemitethisyear.com