Kleinknights at Grant's Grove!!

This is one of our favorite places to go when we have time to spare, about an hour and a half out of Fresno up in the mountains, there is Kings Canyon National Park, Sequoia National Park and a chunk of Sequoia National Forest inbetween... Its simply awesome. Home to the biggest trees on earth, google the General Grant Tree or Sherman Tree, but our favorite is the Boole Tree. About a 2+ mile hike in and out to a giant sequoiadendron giganteum that is beyond belief... These trees are HUGE, not just tall but in circumference too something on the order of about 35 feet at the base... We went up the hill and treated Uncle "Rickett" AKA Eric Kleinknight (Curt's youngest brother) to lunch for his 18th birthday. Mauser went to, somehow eluding pictures...

Here we are at the "Fallen Monarch" tree, once home to the Gamblin Family. I guess it was so large that at one point in history it was converted into a freakin' saloon and -get this- hotel. When I worked in the park, it was merely home to about a hundred or so bats... Unfortunately a tree had fallen at the other side so it was closed off to cruising through this day!!

Grayson decided today was a day he was going to give it to us in angry speak... It was HILARIOUS!! I was mostly catching his looks in the camera that kept being passed back and forth, ergo the laughter and only half my head in the picture... I have many more pics of this look and am wondering if I can bind them all together to do like a flip book with the PC. I think it would be hilarious... Reminded me of a really angry squirrel!!

Uncle Eric, Tristan and Baby Grayson in one of the old "preserved" homesteads... Isn't much to the building, one room, a fireplace and a metric ton of graffiti unfortunately...

Inside one of the fallen trees off the beaten path up at the General Grant tree. We also have some cool pictures where its just the inside of the tree and the scenery at the other end. Very nice!! We actually took quite a few pictures, well, wherever we go we seem to, almost a hundred or so, too bad I cannot post them all! Its so hard to decide which ones to put up too!!

This is on the outside of the tree that is above this pic! We climbed up a pretty steep hill to get there! Go Mama Kleinknight, burn that baby fat!! You can get a pretty good idea of how big this tree must have been. The giant sequoia used to do quite well before they were deforested... They are nearly immune to effects of some fires, bugs, etc. Most of the big ones that is, and then they die off via "windfall" falling over due to a combination of maybe soil, fungus, who knows... The giant trees are amazing and worth a look at if anyone comes out this way!!

Love to all and gotta go! Have two tests to take today!! Just got grades on my other two summer classes, keeping up with the A's!!! Going to post a few of Grayson's 6-month old pictures we took at home pretty soon, maybe even tomorrow... Meanwhile, we have all been laid up with the "plague" a nasty cold that killed my voice today, guess I will have to take a pause and rest right?? Baby has handled it the best of the three of us! And poor Curtis has had to have a root canal on top of everything else!! Our weekend was misery!! So, here's looking forward to even better days to come soon!!! Love - Tristan, Curtis and Baby Grayson!