Giant Redwoods

My wife and I are planning our 3rd cross country trip this coming September. Three States we have not visited yet must fit into our travel plans. They are Missouri, Kansas and California. Although we have approximately 26 days to explore parts our great country, we are not sure where or what to see as of yet. We do want to see the great salt flats, a ghost town or two and perhaps even some natural hot springs. We want to visit the arch in St Louis and then maybe even a baseball or football game in Kansas City or Denver if time allows us. I know that planning your trip can be fun so I must ask one important question. Is there a road someplace in California that one can drive through a giant redwood? That is one thing we must experience if at all possible. If that is possible then by all means we will plan the trip around that. Although most of our time would be spent west of the Rockies, we are open to any suggestions as to any of the “must see’s” in Kansas and Missouri.

Hi,
I just checked my pictures from our first cross country trip in 1986 to be sure. I have pictures of our vehicle driving through and driving on a giaint sequoia in Sequoia NP. I guess one can still do this. When visiting for a rather quick stop in 2004, we did not do this. I do not have a lot of time right now but can give some sites in MO and KS off of Rt 50 and I 70 if you like. Any other states just ask. Have a great time planning your trip.
Diana

Welcome to the RTA Forum!

The Sequouia National Park is the place you'll want to drive through a tree, although it is actually a fallen tree that you kind of drive under.

Here is an interesting link from the National Parks Service website on the tree you can drive through, as well as some of the history of carving roads through trees in the redwoods.

Here is another NPS link which actually shows a picture of the tunnel log.

Thanks for the fast reply Diana. If driving through a giant redwood can still be done in Sequoia NP that would be just great! That means we could see Yosemite and Death Valley also! Perhaps we could even fit area 51 and the extraterrestrial highway (Alien Cafe) into our trip. Some sites in MO and KS off of Rt 50 (Dodge City?) and I 70 would be fantastic. We have plenty of time to plan this out and no mater how planning we do we know enough to be flexible.

Thanks for that link Midwest Michael…. Very interesting indeed and answered my question completely. Driving through a tree would be far more impressive than driving underneath a fallin tree. We only missed the oppertunity by 37 years. Still driving underneath it is something that would captivate our desires. Thanks again for the info.

HI,
The St. Louis Arch is well worth the visit. I know you did mention visiting it. It is an easy off/on I 70 and you can ride to the top and get a great view. In the base is a great westward expansion/Native American museum. You can also picnic there with a great view of the Mississippi River.

In Kansas on the I 70 route, we visited Fort Hays in Hays. It is a great western fort and is across the street from a buffalo reserve. If you request it, the town will send a lot of local info to you. Oakley, a bit west on I 70 is home to the Fick Museum. Just a small place to stop and stretch your legs.

On the way to Rt 50 from I 70, in another trip we stopped at Fort Riley (an open fort). You must get clearance at the gate but can tour it. It was a lot of fun. Abiline was a nice stop and Fort Larned, too. We did visit Dodge City. This was a place my husband had wanted to visit since he was a child and he was disappointed. Out of all of the western type towns we have visited, this was our least favorite. It's just not like Cody, Virginia City, Deadwood or Tombstone to name a few of the ones we love. There are Santa Fe trail ruts just 9 miles west of Dodge City and they were pretty neat!! There are many small towns on Rt 50 and we stopped at a ranch store and found great prices on riding boots and cowboy boots. Sorry, I don't remember the name, but it was on the highway in a little town. If you continue on Rt 50 to CO the Colorado welcome center is a great little stop. Old Bent's Fort is great too!

Hope this helps. Where else did you think about visiting? I have found that by contacting each state that I will travel through and get the info packet helps plan those places you may not have thought about. It's free and even smaller towns, like Hays, are more than happy to send travel info. Good luck with your planning.

Have a nice day.
Diana

There are several drive through trees along US 101 up near the Avenue of the Giants and Redwoods National Park.

http://www.outwestnewspaper.com/trees.html

Each charges admission. Listed from north to south, they are:

Klamath Tour Thru Tree - use the Terwer Valley Exit in the town of Klamath.

Shrine Drive-Thru Tree - Use the Avenue of the Giants exit near the town of Myers Flat.

Chandelier Tree in the Drive-Thru Tree Park - follow signs off Highway 101 in the town of Leggett.

There was once a drive through giant sequoia tree in the Mariposa Grove of Yosemite National Park. This "Tunnel Tree" fell over in 1969 due to heavy snow.

Hi

I just checked on the NP website. The summer 2006 park newspaper, page 6, states where the fallen tree is located that may be driven through. (2.7 miles from General's Hwy). The tree that used to be driven onto (Autolog) that I spoke about cannot be any longer. I do not believe there are any charges for these sites, except the park admission. (You do know about the annual pass at the National Parks. I hope)

Have a nice day.
Diana

Thanks for the ideas Diana. I agree its good to get State info in advance and they gladly send you that info for free. We find that usually the first rest area in each state has a visitors center and you can get the same information there and there is always someone to help answer questions.
I definitely want to pick up a pair of cowboy boots on this trip. We have stopped in many small towns on our past trips and find them quite interesting. They can be ideal places to shop of souvenirs. I must be just like your husband as Dodge City has been on my list to visit for a long time. I guess it’s the allure of its history that makes it such a draw to us. We have visited Cody and Deadwood and we agree that both were great stops. Virginia City seems to fit into our travel plans so we could make that a stop.
We are only in the planning stage of this trip but we were thinking taking I70 west with a stop in St Louis. The arch is a must see for us when we pass that way, be it on the way out or on the way back. Besides we are baseball fans and would like to see a game somewhere along our trip. We have no particular team or city in mind as any will do as long as it fits into our schedule. While traveling through Missouri and Kansas we would only make a few stops, nor would we plan to stay very long unless we were on the way back home and had the spare time.
We do plan on visiting the great salt flats that is on our must see list. At this point in our plan we are not sure where to go after that. There is so much that we want to see but only so much time to see it.
http://www.roadtripamerica.com/forum...ldengate-4.jpg
We could continue on to San Francisco cross the Golden Gate bridge, (something we always wanted to do) then take the coastal highway north and come back by I84. Stopping at whatever we find interesting along the way.
I think we would see more with less traveling if we skipped the San Francisco idea and just headed south from Lake Tahoe. It seams more economical for us to head west from the salt flats to the Lake Tahoe area, with a stop in Virginia City, then south into Southern California. ( Yosemite, Sequoia and Death Valley natl. parks) Then do some exploring in Nevada ( a few ghost towns and area 51) and perhaps some hot springs also.
Then again tomorrow we could scrap the whole destination plan! Maybe change our plans to something like a drive up through Michigan and across Canada and into Alaska. That would be a fantastic roadtrip!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Larrison

There are several drive through trees along US 101 up near the Avenue of the Giants and Redwoods National Park.

http://www.outwestnewspaper.com/trees.html

Each charges admission. Listed from north to south, they are:

Klamath Tour Thru Tree - use the Terwer Valley Exit in the town of Klamath.

Shrine Drive-Thru Tree - Use the Avenue of the Giants exit near the town of Myers Flat.

Chandelier Tree in the Drive-Thru Tree Park - follow signs off Highway 101 in the town of Leggett.

---

Thanks now im back to square one ....lol

Thanks Larrison, you knocked me back to square one and made me revise my thinking. We really want to drive through a tree if possible and information from your link shows we can do that. Perhaps from Lake Tahoe we could scoot up to the Volcanic Ntl Park then cut across to the Redwood Forest. The Oregon caves are not that far from there and would be a nice stop also. Then we could go to Crater Lake Natl. Park and maybe even check out the sights along the Columbia River after that. We would really like to drive north along the Pacific coast and explore a few small Oregon towns.
The only thing that I worry about now will be the price of gas. From what I understand California historically has always had the highest prices and I predict it could be well over $4.00 per gallon come September. That’s not far fetched as it is $3.07 today in Southern New England

Near the General Sherman in Sequoia National Park, there's also a fallen trunk which you can walk through, and it gives an odd and somewhat erie perspective on just how big these trees are.

http://content.altnation.com/gallery...quioa_2463.jpg

It's especially bizarre looking out at the living trees from inside one!

http://content.altnation.com/gallery...quoia_2471.jpg

And naturally, the General Sherman itself is bigger and more impressive than one can imagine (or capture in a photograph).

http://content.altnation.com/gallery...quoia_0213.jpg

All in all Sequoia National Park is an outstandingly beautiful place, it's very humbling to see such majestic grandeur. Apart from the redwoods themselves the Generals' Highway offers spectacular views of all the facets of the mountains and valleys, the only downside is your arms may get tired from steering around the excessively twisty roads!

Quote:

---

the only downside is your arms may get tired from steering around the excessively twisty roads!

---

That is ONE of the fun parts! Thanks for the visuals -- very nice photos.

The biggest difference between the Redwood forests along the coast and the Sequoias (found in the western Sierras -- beyond they fact that they are different plants...) is the level of ground vegetation in the redwood forests -- millions of ferns and the ground is literally teeming with life.

Mark

*Wry smile* sorry uclid if I messed up your plans. I'd been through the Redwoods area about 2 years ago, so I was aware there were drive through trees. Some are limited by how big the vehicle that can go through can be, I noticed.

For a random comments on your trip?

- Lassen is a national park I really like, but there's not a lot to it. Its a wonderful place to hike and backpack, with really nice mountain scenery, but I'd had a couple of people express disappointment to me there "wasn't more to it than that...." YMMV, of course.

- For a ROM route, there's been a lot of discussion on the boards for some routes that would go Las Vegas, through Death Valley, up the east side of the Sierras, across Tioga Pass to Yosemite. Then you can continue up the west side of the Sierras through the 49'er gold country to Tahoe.

From Tahoe/Reno you can go north through Susanville to Lassen, and come down to RedBluff or Redding, and to across to the coast. An alternative would be come west via Sacramento, through the Napa Valley for wine tasting, and then north via 101. That gives you the option of hitting the coast at Mendicino, versus coming in Eureka.

I definitely would hit the Redwoods -- there are some very nice campsites and wonderful places to visit the Redwoods.

If you've got the time, one path would be to continue up the Oregon Coast to Astoria, then west through Portland to go up the Columbia Gorge through the Dalles. And then south via 99 through Bend to Crater Lake, and return east from there.