Fresno to Three Rivers (Sequoia National Park)

Had the obligatory Continental breakfast, before heading sort of eastish...towards Fresno....it is amazing how similar much of the terrain and farmland 'roud these parts are to what we see around Victoria, just further north.....

Now that's a hamburger

We were prepared to give a little bit of doubt to the premise that everything in the US (especially the food servings) were big, however as you can see the one above will take a bit of beating....actually it is a lesson in water ecology at San Luis resiviour, showing how many gallons of water each part of the hamburger takes to make. It is interesting that in the area of water saving California is years behind where we are in Melbourne.....it is still acceptable here to have green lawns in the middle of a drought.

There is no control over bore water collection, and the San Luis catchment is down 50%.Maybe we can sell them the Wonthaggi Desal.....

Typical fallow farmland Btwn Lakewood and Three Rivers

How full?

We stopped at an honesty roadside store between Fresno and Woodlake, and you had a choice of peaches and apricots, or apricots and peaches, but the challenge was to see how much one can get in a bolsa chica and still only pay $5.00. If you squashed then all up there would be several kgs in there...but we resisted, and got a good bag full of fresh apricots and peaches( rather than peaches and apricots)

 

Woodlake. Ca.  Couldn't resist taking a photo of the big cow.(foreground)

In Woodlake we stopped because we needed to get a knife that worked, was sharp, and didn't fold up every time it was used....went to the hardware store...awesome...Stetsons, knives, some hardware, and lots of guns.God bless the NRA! ( he says sarcastically).

Dinner in Three Rivers

Sequoia National Park......

Left the hotel relatively early and travelled to the entrance of the Sequoia - Kings Canyon (different one to the Kings Canyon in Central Australia)National Park, to be told that we needed to get chains.....it was 17 degrees!  Oh well, like every other tourist we had to go back to the Three Rivers General Store, the only chain hiring place handy, lined up for an hour, where Joey, the chain fitter demonstrator, was convinced that I had directed Mad Max, because I knew that only MM one and two(and three?) was filmed in Broken Hill....but that's enough about that....

Got our chains, and paid our $20.00 at the ranger station and stated up the road.  And up the road, and up the road, about 4000 feet in 10 or so miles, to the most amazing Christmas Card scenery type views we Aussies will ever get a gander at.   It was snowing, it was zero degrees, there was lots of snow on the ground, and we were thankful that 1. We had brought chains with us, and 2. We did not have to fit them, as Nathalie's wet weather gear did not stack up to crawling under the wheels to put the chains on.   The roads were ploughed, and quite free of ice...thankfully.

It was lovely...you will note that Nathalie did not have the correct wet weather gear for affixing the snow chains.

If you look really hard you will see a man to the left of the center tree.

The sequoia were almost as magnificent as the big eucalypts in Tasmania, but what made them really special was that they were in California..where we were, and they were covered in snow.  Seriously these trees are the biggest in volume, and height in the world..no really.....or so the Americans say....

Some scale.

Wandered through the snow and even practiced writing names in the snow....some  are more dexterous than others... Made snow angels, and enjoyed the amazing scenery.

Bear droppings.  This photo was taken on a path...NOT IN THE WOODS!...there goes that saying!

Bit chilly!!

Anyway got out of the park, returned the chains, and drove to Bakersfield for dinner....our GPS doing a good job....sort of

Now that is almost as big as the first hamburger in this post.

Then to Mojave, about another hour east, for the night....look out Las Vegas.....