Yosemite National Park covers a huge area of the western Sierra Nevada mountains in central California and has innumerable lakes, meadows, forests and granite summits with endless unspoilt Alpine scenery. At the center is Yosemite Valley, a half-mile deep depression carved by glaciers during the last ice age, which now has soaring 3,000 foot high domes and many powerful waterfalls, including three of the world's highest.
Elsewhere in Yosemite National Park are vast areas of unspoilt and sometimes inaccessible scenic wilderness, as is the case with Kings Canyon and Sequoia, the other national parks in the Sierras. One of two main routes into the backcountry is the road to Glacier Point, a 16 mile drive leading to several excellent overlooks of the main valley, and many footpaths. The other is the Tioga Road (CA 120), along which is a second park visitor center at Tuolumne Meadows - a beautiful region with many small lakes, stark granite peaks, clear mountain streams, waterfalls and meadows with colorful summer wildflowers. An extensive network of trails allow for relatively easy exploration of this splendid landscape.
There are three groves of giant sequoia trees in Yosemite National Park, two near Crane Flat (the Merced and Tuolumne groves) but the most famous is the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees in the southwest corner, near the private village of Wawona. More than 400 huge sequoias grow over the sheltered hillsides; the largest is the Grizzly Giant, estimated to be nearly 3,000 years old.
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