Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
my brother and make him be my slave, and to see Sally Ann Summerfield without a stitch
of clothing on.)
Not surprisingly, none of these dreams came true. (Which is perhaps just as well. Sally
Ann Summerfield is a blimp now. She turned up at my high-school reunion two years ago
and looked like a shipping hazard.) But now here at last I was about to fulfill one of them.
Hence the tingle of excitement as I slung my suitcase in the trunk and headed up Highway
63 for Sequoia National Park.
I had spent the night in the little city of Tulare, in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. This
is the richest and most fertile farming country in the world. They grow over Zoo kinds of
cropsintheSanJoaquinValley.Thatverymorning,onthelocalnewsonTV,theyreported
that the farming income for Tulare County for the previous year was $1.6 billion and yet it
wasonlythesecondhighestfigureforthestate.FresnoCounty,justuptheroad,wasricher
still. Even so, the landscape didn't look all that brilliant. The valley was as flat as a tennis
court. It stretched for miles in every direction, dull and brown and dusty, and a permanent
haze hung on the horizon, like a dirty window. Perhaps it was the time of year, or perhaps
it was the drought that was just beginning to choke central California, but it didn't look
rich or fruitful. And the towns that speckled the plain were equally dull. They looked like
towns from anywhere. They didn't look rich or modern or interesting. Except that there
were oranges the size of grapefruits growing on trees in the front yards, I could have been
inIndianaorIllinoisoranywhere.Thatsurprisedme.OnourfamilytriptoCaliforniaithad
beenlikedrivingintothenextdecade.Ithadalllookedsleekandmodern.Thingsthatwere
still novelties in Iowa-shopping centers, drive-in banks, McDonald's restaurants, miniature
golfcourses,kidsonskateboardswereoldandlongestablishedinCalifornia.Nowtheyjust
looked older. The rest of the country had caught up. The California of 1988 had nothing
that Iowa didn't have. Except smog. And beaches. And oranges growing in front yards.
And trees you could drive through.
I joined Highway 198 at Visalia and followed it as it shot through fragrant lemon groves,
ran along the handsome shoreline of Lake Kaweah and climbed up into the foothills of the
Sierra Nevada Mountains. Just beyond Three Rivers I entered the park, where a ranger in
a wooden booth charged me a five-dollar entrance fee and gave me a brochure detailing
the sights beyond. I looked quickly through it for a photograph of a road through a tree,
but there weren't any pictures, just words and a map bearing colorful and alluring names:
Avalanche Pass, Mist Falls, Farewell Gap, Onion Valley, Giant Forest. I made for Giant
Forest.
