It's always a joy to soak up the splendor of Sequoia, but the park inspires a special sort of wonder in the off-season. Visitors wanting to experience the lodge and the park at their off-season best can try to sneak in now, before the most popular month of August, or better yet, begin planning a visit for the fall. The old Giant Forest Village was a cluster of 300 aging buildings that included cabins, shops and a lodge. Wuksachi Lodge was built on a less densely forested site, and the final part of the old village was torn down last November. The lodge's exterior is plain.
Guest rooms are comfortable but bland, with many overlooking parking lots.
The dining room's menu was simple, but it had all the staples of high-end park dining, with an assortment of steak, fish, chicken and game for dinner. Our favorites included a pan-fried trout with pistachio sauce and roasted chicken with rosemary and shallots. Despite the smaller off-season crowd, we often faced a traffic jam at the dining room, where the wait for dinner was 90 minutes. Our only other options were to make the 20-minute drive to Grant Grove Village in neighboring Kings Canyon National Park, where we had a hearty dinner one night, or to stop at Lodgepole Campground a few minutes away. Sunday morning, we had breakfast at Lodgepole, then visited the legendary General Sherman Tree at Giant Forest, a few miles south of our lodge.