With fierce granite mountains standing watch over high-altitude lakes, the Sierra Nevada is a formidable but exquisite topographic barrier enclosing magnificent natural landscapes and an adventurer's wonderland.
Punctuated with fairy-tale spires, knobby domes and talus-encrusted mountaintops, the scenery in the national parks of Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon might just put a crick in your neck as you gaze at it all. A jaunt through Yosemite Valley is a ticker-tape parade of granite skyscrapers, with Half Dome taking a deep bow. Tempestuous Mt Whitney lords over the far-eastern reaches of Sequoia National Park. With wild rock formations, groves of the planet's largest trees, astonishing waterfalls, deep canyons, unimaginably vast swaths of granite, humbling peaks and a four-season dance card, Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon are no less than perfect.
These are the top sights in Yosemite & the Sierra Nevada, California, according to Lonely Planet.
