Sequoia and King's Canyon National Park, California

 On our way north through California, we decided to visit King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks near Kingsbury, the home of Sunmaid Raisins.  Yes we visited the Sunmaid gift shop first, then took the road less travelled by up 6000 feet to these two beautiful parks, featuring the gigantic sequoia redwoods.  Oh my, these majestic trees are 300-500 years in age and just tower over the viewer!  It was quite cool with roadside and melting snows and we were doubtful that all the roads would be passable.  We managed one loop that took us about three hours to travel.

Beautiful vistas awaited us at  Hume Lake, a man-made feature and recreation area within the parks.  Spring flowers were bursting forth on our drive up which added so much beauty to the road and mountain sides.  Lupins, yellow daisies and redbud or cherry blossoms added so much colour.

Hume Lake

The giant and the dwarves!  If you look very closely, probably with a magnifier, you will notice Bill and Caper beside the towering sequoia, left of centre.  This was by no means the largest in this grove, but certainly huge!  With the amount of rain and snow in the area, it is no wonder the trees are so gigantic!

More cacti and the Agave

 These beauties were located at the date farm and are showing their blooms.  The blooms left look like big red toes atop the flat cacti pads; the cactus below is the teddybear cactus, not the cuddly type of cactus for sure.  One does not want to back into one of these; the prickles reall hurt and are difficult to remove from skin even with gloves.  Don't ask me how I know this!!!!!

In the Yuma Palms Mall, the gorgeous landscaping is just beginning to flower.  The bright yellow tree is a Palo Verde; green trunk and leaves and very small yellow flowers.  In front are Agave stalks or Century Plants, also tall and yellow, just beginning to show colour.  They should be in full bloom in another week.  Once they bloom and die, so does the plant, but through their seed another grows and in a few years, again shows another bloom.  This is an amazing size of flower ( about 10-12 feet high) compared to the size of the leafy plant as seen below.

Medjool Date Palms and Yuma Agriculture

 Our outing included a stop in Bard at the medjool date farm for a delicious date shake and a browse through their store.  Medjool dates are the largest and most sought after date as they are sweet and fairly dry.
Watched the "cherry picker" raise the workers to the palm flowers for pollination manually, a very time consuming process.  Many date farmers do not plant male date palms as their only purpose is to pollinate, but rather purchase the pollen and plant many more female date producers.  Pictures this small do not do justice to the flowers; flowers are white to yellowish green and are bundled or tied together and the workers, then hand pollinate the flowers.  Some date farms use rope ladders upon which the workers would need to climb the tree, then climb a permanently installed rope ladder to the top in order to pollinate the blooms.

 I believe the cherry picker is a much safer and hands free method of pollinating.  Very labour intensive, no matter!

the yellow-green bundles are the flowers

On our back, we found workers picking, cleaning, bundling and bagging cilantro in the field, quite an operation! All of this is done in the field, crated and then placed on the truck for delivery to a warehouse for distribution to supermarkets.  It appeared that the bus was preparing to pickup the workers at day's end; equipment would remain in the field until the next day.
This is a field of red lettuce that is nearly ready for harvest.  Wherever there is water, plants grow!  Irrigation canals bring water to the fields from the nearby Colorado R.  Crops grow and can be harvested quickly here.