Sequoia National Park was designated America’s second national park in 1890, after Yellowstone. Stretching from Three Rivers, California, on the west to Mt. Whitney on the east, Sequoia National Park today protects some 400,000 acres of pristine forest and mountain terrain. Bobcats, mountain lions, bighorn sheep and black bears live in its wilderness.

Sequoia’s Giant Forest, accessible from the park’s southern gate, five miles north of Rio Sierra, contains the towering 2000-year-old General Sherman tree, the world’s biggest tree by volume, as well as four more sequoias that are among the largest living things on the planet.

Other attractions close by include Crescent Meadow, near the Giant Forest Museum, Moro Rock, with its 350 stair steps to the sky, Tharp’s Cabin, built by Sequoia’s first European settler from a hollowed-out sequoia log, and Tokopah Falls, a waterfall reachable via an easy 1.7-mile hike.

So much to see here, you’ll want to take photos to remember it all, especially those towering trees!