Our trek to visit all the National Parks continued this summer as Esther and I made our way to Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon National Park in California. We have now been to 38 of the 49 National Parks in the Lower 48 and Hawaii.
Sequoia is the second oldest park and was created to preserve the remaining groves of giant sequoia trees. Many were logged in the late 1800s before the park came to be but 10s of thousand are now protected.
These trees begin from a seed the size of an oatmeal flake and become the largest living things on earth - not necessarily the tallest but the most massive.
Here are the stats on the General Grant tree. Height 268 feet. Age 1,700 years. Weight 1,254 tons. Diameter at base 40 feet. Diameter of largest branch 4.5 feet.
The General Grant tree is actually fairly young! Other Sequoias are over 3,200 years old. And the General Sherman tree is larger than the General Grant tree! We even had company observing this tree early one morning!
Other than to mankind, these trees succumb only to lightning and uprooting in storms.
I usually do not like people in my nature photos but the only way one can appreciate the size of the tree is with a comparison!
A John Muir quote: “No other tree in the world has looked down on so many centuries as the sequoia.”
Henry Lowndes Jr. CEO