Sequoias at Yosemite

After wanting to push the B Man off the cliff the day before, we got up and drove back into the park and visited the sequoia trees!!!  I've always wanted to visit these behemoths!  I've seen some pretty large ones at Muir Woods, but these were supposedly much larger...and they did not disappoint!

Mariposa Grove is on the southern side of Yosemite park.  We got up early again to make it back into the park and it was like we were the only ones there....so quiet and serene! If you are trying to go, you only have a few more months before its closed down for 24 months!!  Jump on that bandwagon and cross this off your list!

Pretty cool park!

This is one of the trees that had fallen over...it was HUGE!!

I should have taken a picture next to it, but by the time we had gotten back around to the entrance where this was located, there were like 30 tourists there.

SO HUGE!!!

Me standing next to the tree to show the size, it must have been over 6 feet wide!!

This group of trees is called the Bachelor and 3 Graces....according to Wikipedia, "A group of four trees, three of them growing very close together, with a fourth a little more distant. Their roots are so intertwined that if one of them were to fall, it would likely bring the others along with it."

This tree is 2,000 years old!!!  And is the oldest tree in the park but is not the largest in the park.

This is the "The California Tunnel tree: Cut in 1895 to allow coaches to pass through it (and as a marketing scheme to attract visitors to the grove), this is the only living tree with a tunnel in it since the fall of the Wawona Tunnel Tree in 1969."

B Man had to get into the action too!

This one is "The Faithful Couple: A rare case in which two trees grew so close together that their trunks have fused together at the base."

This is the base of the Faithful Couple.

This youngin' was dedicated in 1930...so its 85 years old and still so tiny compared to the others!

Just LOOK at the SIZE of those pine cones!! As big or bigger than my feet!  Guess that's what it takes to make such a large tree!  And that would hurt like shit if one of those would fall on your head on its way down!!

Was pretty cool to see people's etchings from 1957...not so cool to see one of the trees defaced a day prior to our arrival.  People really should treat these national parks with better care.  This one was done way before we understood the importance of these national parks to our history and future.