Day 8 – Sometimes the road less travelled is less travelled for a good reason.

The Sequoia trees In Kings Canyon are stupendous. They really tower over everything, and they live in a very narrow band of habitat, only in southern California and only between 6,000 and 8,000 feet of elevation. There’s nothing dramatic that separates the landscape where the sequoias live and where they don’t , why they only live here is beyond me.

There’s another top road to add to the list – the Road from Cedar Grove in the park to the ‘end of the road”. The landscape is rugged, they corners tight and twisty, relatively few cars (remember this is Southern CA) and the mountains, cliffs and valleys are amazing.

Finished up that ride, head south through Kings to Sequoia Park (more big trees) and down the hill to looking for the turnoff to Springville. Never did see it, so I wound up in Porterville. It was very, very, hot in the valley, and I finally tried out the cool-vest today, it worked as advertised. It’s a cotton vest into which little tubes filled with the absorbent particles usually found in baby diapers. You soak the vest to wet the particles and it functions like your personal swamp cooler. Missed a turn (I am still convinced the California does a lousy job of marking directions) and wound up at the end of the county maintained road. The direction looked right, it was heading up towards a pass, but after five mile I came across a campground and found someone actually in touch with where we were. Back down 5 miles of dirt road on the street bike, picked up the right road and continued on. Some of the roads has sand in the corners so that startled me more than one, very exciting!

Major headwinds the last 80 miles and the gas mileage plummeted to 32 mpg. Finally made it to Panamint Springs (Death Valley) and had to tie the tent to big ricks to keep me from blowing away. At 10 pm it was 94 degrees, no sleeping bag needed tonight!

Miles today 396/3026 cumulastive

Best thing today – the big trees

Challenge – the sand in the corners and the 102 degree heat in the valley