Kings Canyon tends to live in the shadow of its more famous neighbor to the north — Yosemite draws the crowds, the Instagram posts, the bucket lists — but if you show up at Kings Canyon in June you'll find a park that's every bit as spectacular and considerably less packed. The canyon itself, carved by the Kings River through the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, is one of the deepest in North America. Standing at the rim and looking down is one of those disorienting moments where scale stops making sense in the most satisfying way.
The park shares an administrative unit with Sequoia National Park to the south, and together they protect an enormous stretch of the central Sierra Nevada. Kings Canyon runs from the relatively accessible foothills — oak woodland and chaparral, hot in summer — up through ponderosa and mixed conifer forest, past the General Grant Grove of giant sequoias, and into the high granite wilderness of the Sierra that few visitors reach. The Kings Canyon Scenic Byway descends steeply from Grant Grove into the canyon bottom and ends at Roads End near Cedar Grove, where the Kings River runs clear and cold over polished boulders.
General Grant Tree, in the Grant Grove section, is one of the largest trees on Earth by volume — a sequoia so big that a car could park inside its base if not for the rather obvious reasons that would be a bad idea. It's been designated the Nation's Christmas Tree, which somehow undersells it. The hike to Zumwalt Meadow in the Cedar Grove area is the one I'd recommend most: it winds through ponderosa pines along the river, opens into a wide meadow ringed by canyon walls, and feels like something out of a Muir essay made physical.
The Cedar Grove area at the canyon bottom stays cooler than the valley above in summer, which is a relief. It's about a 45-minute drive down from Grant Grove, but worth every switchback.