Sierra Nevada

For sheer grandeur and superlatives, it is hard to compete with the Sierra Nevada. The “Range of Light,” as Ansel Adams so aptly nicknamed them, cover over 39,000 square miles or about the same amount of real estate as Virginia. In that space you will find the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States (Mt. Whitney) as well as one of the deepest gorges in the country (Kings Canyon), the nation’s second deepest lake (Lake Tahoe), and North America’s tallest waterfall (Yosemite Falls) in one of the world’s most famous and visited national parks (Yosemite).

And if it were not for the Gold Rush the Sierra Nevada spawned, the diverse and powerful entity that has come to be known as The Golden State would not exist, at least not in its present form.

Lake Tahoe

Tahoe is the largest alpine lake in the United States. It is also the country's second deepest (1,645') and the sixth largest by volume in the country.

Black Bear (Ursus americanus)

Here a black bear scampers for food in Sequoia National Park. The California Department of Fish and Game estimates there are 25-30,000 black bears in the state.

Yosemite Valley

It is one of the most famous and photographed valleys in the world. Long before Ansel Adams trained his eye on El Capitan, Native Americans had been inhabiting this wondrous landscape for ~8,000 years. The first people of European extraction blundered into Yosemite Valley in 1851 while in pursuit of fleeing Native Americans.

Zumwalt Meadows

Smoke from a nearby fire wafts its way into picturesque Zumwalt Meadows in Kings Canyon National Park.

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