California the Beautiful

Now I really understand why so many people have moved to California in the past couple of hundred years. (By the way, did you know that it was named after a mythical queen "Caleifa"?)
Over the past month and a half, Ilia and I have traveled the state far and wide -- LA, Mojave Preserve, Sequoia National Park, Santa Barbara, Berkeley and Yosemite National Park. Whew! It was tough camping in those cold, cold nights, but it was totally worth it. The desert, the mountains, the giant trees, the ocean -- California has it all.
Some brief highlights of our trips: the Mojave Preserve is amazingly beautiful and enormous. It takes a couple of hours to drive straight along one of its sides! It has dunes, Joshua Tree groves, an old railway station, and an incredible set of caverns, not to mention interesting mesas and gigantic rocks sprinkled all over the place.
Sequoia National Park is also one of the most beautiful places in America, but it's very different. Much more mountainous, and of course, much greener. It has the largest tree in the world, though it's not very pretty or tree-like. It basically looks like a giant living stump of a tree, and it's a mere 2300 years old!
Yosemite is the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Words cannot describe it, but Ansel Adams's pictures can. Check them out!