Potpourri of pics

Since we're kind of in between seasons, here in the central Sierra Nevada (it could rain, snow be hot or be cold), I'm offering up a mixture of pictures for your viewing pleasure. This one below, from Zion National Park, has proven to be very popular with my family and friends. I expect that it would also be popular with photo buyers, as well. Too bad it isn't really a very high resolution picture which I could enlarge beyond 11x14.

On that same trip, I was on my way to Bryce Canyon National Park and found this nice little roadside stop below, called Red Rocks. It's a free (last time I went) Forest Service recreation area on the Dixie National Forest along Utah State Highway 12. These rock formations are called "hoodoos" and are thought to be "entities" by the local native indians. Definitely check this place out, if you're ever in the vicinity.

Here is another place called Red Rocks, but this one is in California, at the extreme southern end of the Sierra Nevada along State Highway 14, between Mojave and the scenic US Highway 395. It's really nothing more than a turnout in the desert but, it IS very geologically interesting and photogenic.

We finally return to the snows of Yosemite again and, this should cool you off from the coming summer heat. Looking at this picture, some may realize that they only have around 200 shopping days until Christmas.

We finally come to the Sequoia National Monument and the 100 Giants. Even the huge old growth ponderosa pine below is dwarfed by the massive Sequoia bigtrees. After the sequoias were first discovered, "tall tales" of these monsters were taken back to the east coast and people back there couldn't (and some WOULDN'T) believe that a tree could grow so big. Even after stripping all the bark off an entire tree and reassembling it in Washington DC, people declared it to be a hoax (fooling the public was a popular activity for some in those days). These trees only exist naturally in a handful of scattered groves along the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada, their range diminished 100-fold by an ancient change in our global temperature. The largest Sequoia tree in the world is over 26 feet in diameter and 350 feet tall, one of nature's largest living things. Also, the largest tree in Europe is a planted giant Sequoia, as there is no "old growth" left in all of Europe.