Trey Ellis, amid sequoias

Writer Trey Ellis is the author of

“Platitudes” and “Home Repairs,” among other novels. He also wrote the screenplays for “Good Fences” and “The Tuskegee Airmen.”

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I went to Kings Canyon National Park this summer and saw the sequoias. They were spectacular.

(I really wanted to see a bear too, but I didn’t see one.)

I’ve been in L.A. for more than 10 years, and Kings Canyon is a place I’d always wanted to go. It’s a spectacular place. We drove to a kind of vista point -- we were all tired and had been driving for three days -- it was like 45 seconds to the top. We got spectacular, sweeping Sierra views you can get only by visiting Tahoe or someplace far away.

I stayed at a crazy place called the Plantation B&B.; It had a ‘Gone With the Wind’ theme.

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Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Park, (559) 565-3341, www.nps.gov/seki. Plantation Bed & Breakfast,

33038 Sierra Highway 198, Lemon Cove, Calif.; (800) 240-1466, (559) 597-2555, www.theplantation.net.