Sequoias, saguaros, Joshua and petrified trees

After Yosemite, we headed a little south to visit Sequoia Nat’l Park and King’s Canyon Nat’l Park. Man, those sequoias are some big dudes!

The General Sherman tree is the largest known living single-stem tree by volume. It is estimated to be about 2,000 years old. (for scale, see the tiny human in the bottom left corner of the picture?):

Fire damage and lichens created pretty contrasts -

Their sheer size kept me walking around with my mouth open.

I just liked this composition -

Also in this park was Moro Rock, with a stair filled trail up it. At “only” 6,725 ft, I just had to climb it.

(enlarge the picture and find all the tiny humans)

The views were pretty spectacular for a relatively easy climb.

Moving on to King’s Canyon, the drive was gorgeous, but it was hard to capture in a picture. It didn’t help that the clouds moved in and created large shadows.

From there, we headed south and east, still in CA, to Joshua Tree National Park.

These aren’t really trees, but rather the largest variety of yucca in the US.

They are said to have inspired Dr. Seuss’ Truffula trees in his book The Lorax.

They dominate the area in the northern and more elevated portion of the park, but drop a few thousand feet and you’re suddenly in desert with lots of cholla cactus and nary a Joshua Tree.

Now we headed east into Arizona and ended up in Tucson, so we could visit the Saguaro National Park (sensing a pattern to our travels?). There was a veritable forest of them!

In the next picture, you can see 6 different cacti (counterclockwise from left) - ocotillo, prickly pear, chainfruit cholla, (tiny) fishhook cactus, barrel cactus and saguaro.