Pretty stark to leave the Arizona and Utah deserts and head straight into Sequoia National Park!

Our visit…just for a day…coincided with rain, too. First rain we’ve experienced in weeks….

We were up in the clouds….the park’s central area where the largest trees are found lies at 8,000 feet elevation.

During a lull in the rain, I found this scene…check out the three generations within an arm’s length of each other!

A few basic Sequoia facts: they are the largest trees by volume on Earth (shorter than Redwoods, but wider), Sequoia bark is more red than a Redwood’s bark, both Sequoias and Redwoods are so tall that they are almost impossible for me to photograph the whole tree at once, Redwoods require a very wet environment and therefore proliferate like rabbits and clutter up the forest, while Sequoias just grow large and shade the forest…so they tend to stand out.

Given a choice between the two types of tree, I’d shoot Sequoias every time. Alas, they are scarce.

But I wasn’t going to risk the Nikon in the rain even for Sequoias!

With the lens down a little…not up to catch as much of the height as possible…I managed to avoid raindrops on this picture. The picture really needs something to show you the scale…that center tree is 8 feet in diameter!