May 20 - Onto Sequoia National Park

This was another LONG Day! We were up fairly early, and we showered and got on the road. Our destination was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. First, we sought out coffee, breakfast, and a charge. McDonalds (for coffee), Burger King (their croisanwichs rock), and a new electric truck charging station did the trick. The trick chargers were cool with more than 40 chargers mostly designated for heavy duty trucks. We appreciated the $1 charge and we were on our way to Sequoia, with a quick stop for groceries on the way. 

Picture of our campsite in Kern River State Park

Leon is looking at the river that was right next to our campsite. It would have been nice to spend more time here, but we were off to see giant trees.

Our campground was near Bakersfield, which has major oil & gas operations. These are just a few of the many hundred oil wells we saw.

Right up the road from the oil and gas drilling was a large recharging station for heavy duty trucks (they have settings so that they can charger medium and light duty, too). California is way ahead of the game when it comes to improving air quality.

This is the bank of about 40 heavy duty charging stations. 

Once we got into the park, we realized we may have an issue with charging. There were no chargers in either park, and we had to go a good 40 miles after we left the parks to charge (not everywhere in CA has built out EV infrastructure). We were also going up about 5,000 feet in elevation. We did some calculations and decided we would be OK on Generals Highway going through the parks. We had a picnic lunch at the visitors' center and were on our way.

Of course, Sequoia trees were the highlight of the park. We first walked through a grove of giant sequoias, then drove a few miles more to reach the area with the General Sherman tree, the largest single organism in the world. It was cool of course, but the experience was marred by a fight that actually ran into me as the guys were brawling. Apparently one guy called the other guy's wife a bitch. An expected lowlight of the day.

That's Leon in between 2 giants. The trees are so massive!

General Sherman - the largest single organism on the planet.

We drove on through a small portion of Kings Canyon Park and enjoyed some decent views from the highway but didn't make any stops. From there we headed east to Fresno where we easily made it to the Wal-Mart for a charge and had dinner at a nearby Indian place. We were back on the road quickly to head to our campground for the night near Groveland. 

This drive was surprisingly crazy. We learned a few days later that Haley set her Google maps to minimize the driving distance. With that, Google decided to take us on every county and back road possible, culminating in us driving a scary mountain road at dusk, followed by a bumpy un-maintained road. We finally reached our destination, again, just after dark. We set up and plugged in to charge overnight.