Fresno Yosemite International

The largest tree on Earth by volume. The General Sherman stands 275 feet tall, 36 feet across at the base, and an estimated 52,500 cubic feet of solid wood — bigger by mass than the largest blue whale ever measured. It is not the tallest (that is a coast redwood) and not the oldest (bristlecone pines beat it by a millennium), but for sheer woody substance there is nothing larger alive. Best estimate on age: 2,200 to 2,700 years. It germinated when Athens was still a city-state. Sequoia National Park was established in 1890, the second national park ever (after Yellowstone), specifically to stop loggers from cutting these trees down. The Giant Forest grove contains five of the ten largest sequoias on the planet — General Sherman, Washington, Lincoln, General Grant (in adjacent Kings Canyon NP), and President. Sequoias only grow naturally in a 70-mile band of the Sierra Nevada western slope, between roughly 5,000 and 7,000 feet elevation, where snowmelt feeds them and periodic fire clears the forest floor so their cones can release seeds.

Just outside KMER. Over 70 military aircraft on outdoor display, including the holy grail of bomber collections: a Convair B-36 Peacemaker (one of only four left), a B-52D Stratofortress, an SR-71A Blackbird, a U-2 Dragon Lady, a B-58 Hustler, an F-14 Tomcat, an F-105 Thunderchief, and many more. Castle was a SAC base from 1941 until 1995, training B-52 crews for the nuclear deterrent mission. The aircraft sit on the same ramp where Cold War alert crews waited for the call that, thankfully, never came.

One of the most iconic landscapes in America from the air. Half Dome's sheer 2,000-foot face, El Capitan's 3,000-foot granite wall, Yosemite Falls cascading 2,425 feet — all visible on a clear day from above the Sierra Nevada crest. The high country east of the valley (Tuolumne Meadows, Cathedral Range) is just as dramatic as the iconic walls — granite domes and alpine lakes above 8,000ft. Tioga Pass at 9,943ft is the eastern gateway through the Sierra crest from Lee Vining.

Sixty feet of hexagonal basalt columns standing like a wall of stone pipes in the Reds Meadow Valley, just west of Mammoth Mountain. The formation is about 100,000 years old — molten basalt that pooled in a glacial valley and cooled slowly enough that contraction cracks split it into near-perfect six-sided columns. Glaciers later scraped one side flat, exposing the cross-section. The top of the formation is paved with the polished hexagonal tile-tops of the columns, a natural mosaic floor. National Monument since 1911 — Theodore Roosevelt protected it from a proposed hydroelectric dam that would have blown the columns up to make a reservoir. Sister formation to Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland and Devils Tower in Wyoming, though far younger than either. Trailhead is at Reds Meadow, accessed by shuttle from Mammoth Mountain in summer; closed by snow most of the rest of the year. A short hike beyond the postpile reaches Rainbow Falls, a 101-foot drop on the Middle Fork San Joaquin River that catches morning rainbows reliably enough to name itself.