I headed back through the Mojave desert. It is a beautiful landscape, dotted with Joshua trees. It is so dry, and different to anything we get in New Zealand, but beautiful in its own way.

The next day I headed out towards Sequoia National park. The drive there was picturesque, the landscape had started to become more and more agricultural, there were rows of fruit and nut trees and fruit stalls on the way.

Sequoia national park is a popular place. It was very hot and dry, but a lot less hot than the day before. I drove into the park and travelled up the winding road towards the big trees. It was a beautiful day and I stopped off at some of the scenic look outs on the way.

It took a while to find a park, but eventually I did. There were so many people there. I think they did a good job of managing the visitors and keeping things tidy though.

After finding a park, I wandered around the park for a few hours. It is very well set out with good walking paths and informational displays.

As well as these trees being enormous giants, the forest also smells amazing. The forest smells of pine, and underneath the trees there are a whole lot of beautiful wildflowers. It's a pretty cool place!

There is a shuttle service that takes park visitors up to see General Sherman which is the largest tree on earth. They work it out based on overall size, so the girth of the tree as well as its height. 

The Sequoia trees in the park are up to 2700 years old. They have some cross cuts of fallen old trees, and its strange to think that these trees were ancient during the middle ages, and still really old when, say, Cleopatra was ruler of Eygpt. 

Sequoia National park is an amazing place, and I can definitely recommend a visit if you are visiting California.

I decided that I wanted to see Sequoia National park, and so I figured the most practical way of doing this was by the most american form of transit, the road trip. My starting point was Las Vegas, and I headed through the Mojave desert which to get there. 
It was incredibly hot when I landed, 127 degrees F, (52.7 C). I stocked up on water which I stored in the car before I left and drove out into the desert. 

It was mighty hot, even though it was the afternoon. It was still hot in the evening and after it got dark. I had the air conditioning on high the whole time. I stopped off at a classic 1950's american style diner on the way. There wasn't anything vegetarian for me to eat, but it was still cool to see a classic amercian diner.

From Nevada I travelled up to New York. The summer weather in New York was just about perfect, around 21C. I didn't have a lot of time. I arrived in the evening and went for a stroll. 

I made sure to go to the Metropolitan museum of art when I was there. It really is an amazing museum, next to Central park.

The Met museum has amazing collections of ancient art works.
Some of it was very old, from places like the 'cradle of civilization', Mesopotamia. I particularly liked the giant, intact pot (right) which was around 5000 years old. There was a fantastic collection of art from ancient Greece, Roman times, horse-men from Assyrian  tombs, busts of ancient Greek philosophers.
There was also a great selection of more modern art, including a lot of post impressionist art works by Monet and Van Gogh.
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Overall, it is a fantastic museum if you get a chance to travel to New York I recommend a visit.

It was deepest darkest (windiest) winter in Wellington, so it was good timing for using up several weeks of leave and head off to America, where it was brightest sunniest summer. The flight was pretty cool, the flight path went over the Grand Canyon!