Huh? Rain in August? We occasionally get a "prune rain" about then -- this is local folklore: before it became Silicon Valley, Santa Clara Valley used to be the world capital of the prune-drying industry. The "prune rain" comes (and it doesn't come every year) in late August, which would be just in time to dampen and ruin all the flats of prunes drying in our warm California sun, if we still had any of those.

Joe's list is quite comprehensive, but he neglected to mention that there are two types of redwood trees native here. Coast redwoods (sequoia sempervirens) are indeed splendid -- the tallest trees in the world. But farther from the coast, there are also Sierra redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum), also called big trees. These are my favorite trees. It's a completely different species, the largest tree by volume rather than height, because of its tremendous girth.

These grow in several places in the Sierra, but I'm thinking your best access point for them may be Calaveras Big Trees State Park, on Highway 4 east of Angels Camp. (You must go to Angels Camp, if only to see the place about which Mark Twain wrote "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." Actually reading some of Twain's stories of old California would be a great introduction to a visit here, as would Bret Harte and Jack London.)

That state park is a lot less crowded than many of the other, more celebrated big tree viewing spots, because those are mostly in high-profile national parks.

(Joe, help me out here -- am I getting this right?)

More later...

Cheers,
Claire