Hey everyone! It's been too long since I've posted but alas, I am back and with some fun stuff! If you didn't know, this past week was National Park Week. National Park Week is meant to be America's celebration of our national heritage. To celebrate, the National Park Service partners with the National Park Foundation and all fees for entering the parks are waived.

Our original plan was to visit two national parks near Los Angeles during this week. However, we figured it's best we save one for an extended trip. So this week, we headed out to Sequoia National Park. If you remember from my Christmas blogpost, we went to Sequoia National Forest in December. We were pretty happy we took the extra mile (figuratively) to visit the park this time around.

We arrived at the visitors center and, of course, I collected my patch! From there, we drove around a bit to see what we had to explore. Our first stop was the Giant Forest. We made the hike down to see General Sherman, the largest tree in the world by volume! It is also estimated to be over 2,200 years old! Sequoias are insanely massive and there's nothing like being surrounded by these trees to make you feel so small. We spent some time exploring the sequoias in the Giant Forest before starting to head out.

On our way out, we took a turn to check out Moro Rock. On the way there, we took a drive through Tunnel Log. Sequoia trees happen to unexpectedly fall over. They're not really known to rot or decay, resulting in their long lifespans. However, if the soil around the tree becomes too wet, that could be one cause of them falling. Tunnel Log fell in 1937 and was tunneled out for a visitor attraction the following summer.

Our last activity before heading out was conquering Moro Rock. I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into when we started our journey up. A little backstory; when we were still at the bottom of the entire drive up, we stopped an an overlook with other visitors. A lady mentioned something about 400 steps to climb to the top of Moro Rock. My first thought was "Um, no thank you." However, my mind changed once we were standing at the foot of the trail.


We got halfway up to an overlook and Lyle decided to stay behind. I kept going because I felt I had gone too far to turn around. Once I continued up, I didn't blame him for wanting to stop. It was somewhat terrifying and some parts weren't protected by railings so one false move and.. well, you know. It was only a quarter of a mile but it was all up a steep trail so it was pretty strenuous. The view from the top and sense of accomplishment was so very rewarding though. There was a panoramic view of the Sierra Mountain range and it was just so beautiful.

We're definitely already planning to head back and check out some of the other things we missed. Hopefully next time can be an extended trip. I hope you enjoyed and this inspired you to check out a National Park near you! Check out more photos from our adventure below and as always, let me know what you think & thanks for reading!