California, 6th November, Sequoia national park, Crystal Cave, General Sherman and Moro Rock

We finally made the visitor centre, the Giant Forest Museum to glean a little information and when we parked found there was snow on the ground.

We realised that a tour of the Crystal Cave, which sounded inviting, was to start in about an hour and that it was a 40 minute drive to the entrance so we went straight up there. The tour was led by an earnest young man who was well acquainted with the geology of the cave and told us all about it. Crystal was a complete misnomer as it was limestone with some mites and tites.  I have only been to large caves in France, where the guide always says 'Voila un chou-fleur' or 'Ici la Madonne', so it was quite refreshing to find geological features described in geological terms. I assumed that water would take aeons to percolate through the mountain, but in this instance rainwater gets through to the bottom of the cave very quickly.

I did not take a picture inside the cave but there was a little waterfall outside which I did photograph. I had no tripod with me but managed to rest the camera on a rock to get a slower shutter speed.

We could not go to Sequoia without seeing the trees so we made our way back up to the Giant Forest Museum where there is a large grove of sequoias including the General Sherman tree which is supposed to be the bulkiest organic object in existence (on this planet anyway), and around 2,100 years old, making it just BC. It lies amongst other sequoias but is obviously the largest.

It was amusing to watch people posing in front of it, or trying to photograph it with phones.

Mairi is standing next to a depression in one of the trees. The bark normally protects them from forest fires, but sometimes they get more damaged and a fire can eat out some of the trunk.

For sunset Mairi thought that we should drive to Moro Rock, a granite dome with a quarter mile staircase hewn in the side with great views from the top. Unfortunately they had shut the road to the rock due to snow (although it had melted) so we had to run through the forest to access it and the sun was already going down by the time we got there. Mairi sprinted up the steps and I followed more slowly, stopping to photograph on the way. The view was tremendous from all directions with snowy mountains to one side and a fog filled valley to the other. We had not realised at that stage that fog was normal in California.

By the time we had descended to the bottom of the rock it was dark so we walked back along the road with our head torches. Driving back to the campsite the moon was spectacular. On return we cooked a quick meal and made a small campfire for our second and last night in Sequoia.