It’s Sequoia Day! When I started planning this trip 2 years ago, I was trying to pack as many of the big national parks in as possible. I really thought the girls would like seeing the big trees up close, so I tried to squeeze it in. This resulted in a VERY aggressive agenda for today. We need to checkout of our campsite by 12 pm and travel to our base camp for Yosemite that’s about 6 hours away, so we need to hit all the highlights this morning. We can do this. Just keep repeating that to the family and maybe they’ll believe it.
We were planning to leave camp by 7am, which is about the earliest I can get agreement on leaving without divorce papers being drafted. We left at 7:15 (I call that the Hodgson 15) in two cars – me and Ryan and girls in the Jeep and the rest in the Lexus. The RV park was very close to the entrance gate to Sequoia – only about 15 minutes away. However, I missed a key detail in my planning – the big trees are up… like WAY up the mountain. You have to drive 45 minutes of 15 mph switchbacks – what feels like 100 of them to get to the juicy parts that you want to see. I was loving the drive, but even I was getting a little green from motion sickness due to all the curvy road driving. I could feel early morning Noelle burning laser stares at me – tired and seasick are not her favorite combinations of things.
The sights were again incredible the higher and higher you went to up. The plant life was constantly changing, and you had a different angle of epic mountain landscape around every corner. As you got to the last 20 percent of the climb, you start to see the massive sequoias that we’d point and gawk at. We don’t have anything that even comes closer to the width of these trees in Georgia.
After what felt like forever, we finally got to the top and headed straight for the big boy – General Sherman – the largest tree by mass in the world. We found the parking lot for the giant Grove, got nice up front parking because we’re early birds and hiked downhill on a paved path. There were huge sequoias everywhere, and you don’t really know what you’re looking for, but you quickly got to the sign saying “there it is” that shows you that particular huge sequoia is the one you’re after. It didn’t look THAT big from far out, but when you get close, the tree MASSIVE. Ryan jumped the guard rail since noone was there yet and we took a picture of him leaning on it and he looks like an insect next to it. We got our pictures (for the gram) and took a stroll around some of the other consolation trees. They were big, but if you’re not first, you’re last.
The hike back up was a little more strenuous than I thought it would be. About a third of the way up we were all weezing due to low oxygen in the higher altitudes, not because we’re all out of shape and have bodies resembling General Sherman. A nice ranger ran into us as we were resting and told us s few interesting things about the trees and theories on why some of the trees may not be doing well (hint, it’s climate change). I think he gladly would have spent hours talking to us about the trees, but time is running low, do we politely send him to the next family and hike back up to parking.
Next goal is to find a tree that we can drive through. I think I’ll be able to die happy if I’m able to drive through a sequoia in the Jeep. The ranger told us where it was, but that it sometimes has really long lines and it’s a single lane road so it can get messy because everyone in the park has the same dream I do. Let’s go – if the lines are too long, we’ll just leave and I’ll cry myself to sleep.
The map was a little difficult to decipher and they had almost no signs at all for the tunnel tree (maybe on purpose to keep crowds confused), but we found the museum that it was next to and then found the right path to it. We made it there just at the right time with only a couple cars there parked to walk on top of it. It’s that time! We drove right through that tree, then looped around and did it again for good measure, cheering the whole time!
We were actually doing ok on time, but Ryan saw an interesting looking spot on the way there called Moro rock that you can hike to the top of. It had 3 cars there when we passed it before, but when we looped back, every parking spot was full. Luckily jeeps can make their own spots, so we parked it illegally, left the others behind so we could sprint up quickly and ran up to see what the fuss was about. It’s a huge piece of granite where they added stairs and guardrails so you can hike to the top of it. It was more of a hike than it looked, with about 500 steps and had many places where the guardrail was just a rock coming up to your knees that was between you and a 1000 foot fall. Got your blood pumping. It was a little congested, but we got to the top as quickly as we could. Great views of the whole valley – definitely worth the time. We took in a minute of the wonder then sprinted down. Time to go.
We jumped back in our cars and flew out of the park. Definitely running a bit behind. The exit road is the reverse of the steep climb we took this morning, but going down it’s much more fun. I was flying through the gears of the Jeep to gear down in the steep parts to avoid melting the brakes and it was pure joy. I thought I was going down fairly quick, but still had to pull over for a few motorcycles and Hondas that were trying to Tokyo drift down the mountain. Made it down and flew out in record time. Even had time to grab a hat from the side of the road that we noticed on the way in. I heard Noelle scream NOoooo as I put it on. I think she likes it.
We made it to campsite at 11:55 and were out of the spot at 12:01 – even filled up the fresh water tank halfway to make sure we’d have water at the next site. Success! Now the next phase – travel to our campsite at June lake – Oh Ridge campground. I tried hard to get a campsite in Yosemite, but everything was sold out 3 seconds after it opened up. June lake is located east of Yosemite and the quickest path would have been to go through the park and take Tioga pass through the mountains. I was a little worried to take the RV that way as it was fairly steep with grades of 6-8 percent. I still would have tried that route, but Yosemite is so busy right now that they’ve switches to requiring reservations site entry. I bought two reservations that are good for 3 days each, but only one of them starts today, and they don’t list any of the June lake campgrounds as exceptions to let you drive through.
So to solve this problem, I look for a reroute from Google maps that would take me outside of the park. It finds one that adds a couple hours, with nice sounding highway names like CA-108. It will add a little time, but we’ll there in plenty of time….
The initial path took us through busy California highways through Fresno, and we stopped by a Walmart for supplies, and found and an A&W next to a taco stand for lunch. The RV crew for Coney island dogs with root beer floats and Ryan/Dad got tacos and the biggest burrito I’ve ever seen.
The drive went fine for most of it, switching from orange orchards to mountainy highway. Then we got to CA-108, and the worst mistake I’ve ever made.
There were a number of warning signs coming down the mountainy road saying tractor trailers > 38 foot should turn around. I thought it was just because it would have some sharp switchbacks that a really long truck couldn’t manage. We got to the last warning sign with a huge turnaround sign, with the road going straight up and a 26 percent grade sign and a label calling my friendly CA-108 – Sonora Pass. 26 PERCENT GRADE. They warn you on highways when you hit 6 percent grade. 26 is impossibly STEEP. I’m towing a Jeep and half a tank of fresh water.
Stop reading right here if you have a weak constitution. Everything afterwards is a massive mistake and put my family in danger. I should have turned around, drove another 3 hours and begged the park rangers to let us through. Read the following if you want the an example of poor decision making and what not to do.
I have a quick conversation with Dad, the former truck driver and he thinks we’ll be fine if we just cruise up on low gears. We decide to punch it through. I square up with Sonora and punch the gas. As soon as it hits the 26 percent, everything slows to a crawl, but we keep moving up at 5-10 mph. The RV is engine is roaring and that grinding sound at low speeds is back but she keeps moving up the mountain and the Lexus is sticking with us. We creep along like that for a good 20-30 minutes and eventually the grade evens out to something more like 10 percent and the RV was actually able to shift to 2nd and we moved up the mountain a little quicker. There were tons of the usual sharp curve switchbacks, but most had no barriers and fell off into empty ravine. I hugged close to the center line.
We are watching the elevation markers and get above 9500 and find snow on the ground. My nerves were a little shot at this point or I’d pull over and let the girls play in the snow. Things weren’t that bad at this point, but what goes up, must come down. I pulled to a stop at the top of the hill overlooking a downward 26 percent grade, said a prayer, dropped it into 1st gear in manual mode and eased it down.
I tried to keep it going slow but it just wanted to fly down the hill. The engine was screaming at 5400 rpms and I was trying to pump the brakes as little as possible, but we’d hit a 15 mph turn and id need to hit the brakes hard to get around it and immediately be in another 26 percent grade descent. It kept going like this for an eternity. I wanted to stop at a pull out but was worried I couldn’t slow momentum enough. Ryan calls in on the walkie talkie suggesting we pull over to stop to let the brakes cool off, and just then I see white smoke coming up from both sides of my wheels as we start another descend going into a hair pin turn. I tried the brakes and I could feel a big loss in breaking power – they almost felt like they weren’t there. That is a sickening feeling. I’m in full emergency mode and pulled into the other lane blind as I went around the corner at a much faster than I felt comfortable and pushed the brakes down to the floor and it slowed down to a crawl just enough for me to put it in park and stop… That was one of those big exhale and put forehead on the steering wheel, and thank your creator moments. Dad pulled in behind me and Ryan ran up calling for water because the Lexus brakes were flamed up. They doused the flames and I paced around shaking for 20 minutes.
We waited for another 20 minutes until we were sure the brakes were cooled off and pulled back out. We were actually just 3 turns from the bottom to the most beautiful rolling FLAT landscape I’d ever seen. We decided that our bad luck with vehicles on this trip was because we had not given the RV a proper name, and not due to the lack of good decision making by the owner/operator of the RV. Jayne wanted to name her Mercy, an appropriate name. We decided on Sonora. We found out later from the internet that you should never, under any circumstances, take an RV or anything hauling a trailer up Sonora Pass – Tioga pass should be used instead…
We were running in fumes and needed gas to run the generator since we’d be staying at a campsite with no hookups. Filled it up at $5.39 a gallon at the only gas station close. I’ll consider that the Sonora Pass tax.
We arrived at Oh Ridge campground in pitch black darkness, found our sites and managed to pull in without smashing anything. We ate a couple sandwiches, ventured out to find the restrooms, got lost for 30 minutes on the way back in the darkness and confusing campsite. We were all exhausted and needed sleep. Glad to still be breathing the cool mountain air.
