Sequoia National Park on the Southern end of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range of California is federal land set aside to protect the Giant Seqouia, the largest trees and largest (multicellular) organisms on Earth. This is centered around the aptly named Giant Forest, which holds five of the ten most massive trees on Earth, including the largest, the General Sherman Tree, which has an estimated bole volume of 1,487 m^3. While not the tallest, oldest, or widest tree, the General Sherman manages to be simultaneously one of the tallest, oldest, and widest trees. Seqouia National Park also includes a large chunk of the Sierra, including Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States (4421m) and immediately borders its neighbor King's Canyon National Park.

Seqouia National Park is one of my favorite parks in the US, a place my family used to go every other year to, a place that for years was less known and less crowded than Yosemite. The towering red trees made a beautiful contrast to winter snows, and frequently we came across black bears (including one incident where two cubs stole a picnicking lady's strawberries before being treed and chased off by a park ranger with a squirt gun). Recently, it seems like the park has gotten a lot more popular, and that has removed a bit of its charm for me. Nevertheless when you find yourself hiking in the forests among the towering giants it remains a hallowed experience. It is almost impossible to capture the absolute sense of scale of the giant sequoias unless you are among them.

From  theroguez!

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