Yosemite National Park, California
As a child I remember being amazed by an old photo of a car driving through a gap in the bottom of a giant redwood tree in Yosemite, California. I had no idea that trees could grow so large, I had never encountered a tree even half as wide in England. I wondered if our family car would be able to fit through the base of a tree, I wondered how high the tree in the photo must be and how far up it I would be able to climb.
The tree we know as the ‘Giant Redwood’ is the Sequoiadendron giganteum. This tree grows only in the groves of the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. The largest of the Sequoia is known as General Sherman and is 83.8 metres tall and has a circumference of 31.3 m. It is thought to be between 2,300 and 2,700 years old.
[Side note: The oldest know tree in the world is a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine called Methuselah which is around 4,841 years old. This tree is also in California although it’s exact location is kept secret]
Yosemite National Park is about 200 miles east of San Francisco which is quite a short drive by American standards. Many overseas visitors fly in to San Francisco International Airport, hire a car and drive east across California on the CA 120. There a lots of places to stay within the park including campsites and lodges to rent.
For more information about what to do in Yosemite see the National Park Website.
