Today is another long stage away from our current location, a transition day among other things.
We want to get to Three Rivers to do Sequoia Park tomorrow. It's a 3.5-hour drive to Three Rivers. We get up quietly and have breakfast, then set off without wasting any time.
We don't even make any stops en route, as we're taking the highway to save time. We arrive in Three Rivers at around 1 p.m., and take the opportunity to eat in a gift shop restaurant.
After lunch, we take a short hike beside a river. The water is very blue, which combined with the surrounding 38°C heat, makes us want to dive in. But we save that for later in the afternoon, and finish our hike in peace.
Afterwards, we pick up the keys to our accommodation and spend some time at the motel. We head out again 2 hours before sunset. We'd like to find a hike in the area, but there's nothing, or we'd have to enter Sequoia Park and save that for tomorrow. We find a viewpoint that looks interesting on the map, located at the top of a mountain, ideal for getting an overview. To get there, you have to walk along the whole mountain on the way up, from an altitude of 200 metres to 1500 metres.
Here we are, it's really not bad. We take a few photos and carry on, as there's still time before sunset.
We arrive in front of Sequoia Park, and decide to carry on. We'd hoped to save it for tomorrow, but the park is so big we won't be able to do it all tomorrow anyway. We come across some truly impressive sequoias along the way. Trunks 5 meters in diameter and at least 40 meters high. We observe them and take a few photos before turning back.
On the way back, we make a few stops, once again at the top of the mountain, where we settle in for a few minutes to watch the sunset.
We return an hour later, in complete darkness, because here when the sun goes down it's really dark (in France there's always a little light in the sky, even when the sun is down).