Big Trees Trip With Aunt Grace

My Aunt Grace came to visit on the train. She is my mom's older sister and she is the one who taught me the most about photography and how to "see" and compose. She has had an interesting life, teaching art-mainly oil painting, and traveling around the world. While she was here I borrowed my friends' slide scanner and I have been scanning many of her slides from her travels. With her permission I will be sharing some of her sheepy shots here on the blog in the future.

I wanted to take her some place she had not been before and see a little bit of our countryside, so I took her to Big Trees State Park which has the largest groves of Sequoia trees left in the world. They are found only on the western slope of the Sierra Mountains and are unbelievabl...the pictures really don't show how awesome they are. The coastal redwoods are the tall trees, but the Sequoias are the largest living thing on earth, they are shorter but just huge around. I think the oldest tree in the park is around a thousand years old. It is almost magical walking through the forest. It is a place where I feel God's presence with me as I walk along and I definitely gave my new camera a workout! LOL I have had to experiment with getting the pics small enough to post on a regular basis. So I have made them smaller than usual but hopefully you will get the idea.

The photo above is A and J ready to go. It is one of the cutest pics we have had of the two of them recently. We don't usually dress them alike...but it is easier to tell them apart ever since J gave herself her own haircut! LOL