Basket tree!

I've not seen the General Sherman. Mark Ryden recently painted the tree and I'm gripped by a desire to head north sometime soon. Road trip!

Is the King's Canyon camping trip still on the calendar because if so then I'm sure a lot of people will soon see General Sherman.

Getting up to the Sequoias isn't that bad of a trip - I'd like to try to do it sometime - whenever I get a breather. It looks like its probably too late to get ressies to a campground on a weekend, though, and I just can't be sure of my time until it comes up. :( Maybe a nice day trip?

As has been mentioned, reservations are generally not a necessity.

Steinbeck's Travels with Charley:

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe.... Respect - that's the word. One feels the need to bow to unquestioned sovereigns....
Of course, many of the ancient groves have been lumbered off...
Fossils of these ancients have been found dating from the Cretaceous era while in the Eocene and Miocene they were spread over England and Europe and America. And then the glaciers moved down and wiped the Titans out beyond recovery. And only these few are left - a stunning memory of what the world was like once long ago. Can it be that we do not love to be reminded that we are very young and callow in a world that was old when we came into it?

I had half expected to see the Santa Barbara Fig Tree. The pictures don't do it justice.

That fig tree is absolutely amazing! The pics don't do it justice.

Yeah, the fig tree's amazing (I don't envy anyone who has to clean the fig mess up). I wonder if pictures do it justice, though.

I've heard pictures don't do it justice.

My in-laws traveled to Yosemite last year. Their gift to us was a sequoia seed picked up at the gift shop. We've still got it in its cute can ("Grow a sequoia in your backyard!") and we're threatening to plant it in our foot-wide strip of dirt in the patio. :D