After breakfast, we left for our first adventure of the day – the Remington Hot Springs.  While this website indicates the top pool was 106, Scott’s calibrated hot tub temperature gauge said maybe 99-100.  The path seemed longer than 300 feet, and Scott’s knees complained that it was steep.  But the soak went well, the sulfur treatment seemed to help Scott’s knees, and after a 10-15 minute soak we yielded our two-person top pool to two nice Japanese ladies.

The next step was to see Giant Sequoias.  Tom figured a 1/2 hour detour on the way back to our campsite would yield these magnificent trees.  He had seen them in 2012 with his brother and thought there were along Route 155. After an hour Tom’s unerring memory and geographical certainty faltered – he’s still not sure why.  But we headed back to Kernville and ate lunch at Dam Korner Café .

After that we stopped by the Kern Valley Museum in downtown Kernville, which we learned from an excellent docent was once Whiskey Flats, and several of the townsfolk would prefer that name was restored.  Chris the docent gave us lots of very interesting facts about gold mining, and the colorful history of the area.

Chris said we should look into the Trail of 100 Giants in Sequoia National Forest – not Sequoia National Park (he said why would you look for giant Sequoias there?)  Scott pointed out that the website said this area was closed.  Chris said the National Forest Office down the street could resolve the issue.  That office was closed on weekends.

So – we just decided to make the hour long drive anyway and see what was up when we got there.  It was a long, twisting road that mainly parallels the raging Kern River – which, while it seemed way too rough, had kayakers and rafters running it between dams.

As we got closer to 100 Giants, the effects of a recent forest fire were evident, including a fairly major logging effort along the road for trees killed by the fire but with, apparently, lots of good wood.  After a few turns we arrived at 100 Giants.

The nice lady extorting $12 parking fees cheerfully said they have been open for 2 weeks – no idea why the website said they were closed until the end of May.  And, most of the parking spaces were filled.  We took a short walk on the smooth, paved, but narrow trail and were very impressed with the massive Sequoias.  Pop quiz – how many words in the English language have all 5 vowels?  Answer at the end of the post.

After the long drive back to the KOA, we were pretty tired, but Scott cooked a delicious meal of BBQ ribs and rice and leftovers.  Some might argue that Scott made a mistake cooking the entire bag of rice, but Scott likes rice and now can eat it most every day for the rest of the trip.

After dinner Tom found photos of him and his brother among the Sequoias, and it was not on Route 155, but on the next road North from Lake Isabella – leading to the same Trail of 100 Giants.

+ Just Sequoia.  It is, apparently, the only one.