A few weeks ago now my mom and brother Paul drove across the nation and dropped off a car (previous post) for a group of us to use for our road trip back home from Oregon. When I dropped them both off at the airport in Portland, my lovely girlfriend, Sarah Thomas, arrived the same night for the beginning of our own National Park/Northwest Tour. The first destination was a long drive down through Oregon and the California coast to the majestic Redwoods National Park. We stopped for gas and lunch in the small town of Wonder (above) along the way.
Sarah and I stopped for a picture as we entered California, the weather was stereotypical Californian sun and blue skies...for now.
After a few more hours of driving along persistently winding roads we were elated to see we had reached our destination.
On the way towards our campsite at Flint Ridge we stopped for a moment for our first ever views of the West Coast. Heavy cloud cover had begun to move in, but that wasn't a surprise as the coastal sequoia (redwood) trees receive something like 30% of their water intake from fog alone.
Sarah with the Pacific to her back.
Driving along one of the main roads through the park we saw this herd of elk just hanging out in a field near some camping sites.
We went for a superb hike in the middle of the Prairie Creek Redwoods region. It was definitely a great hike to showoff the immensity of the trees as well as the lushness of the forest.
Sarah walks among giants.
I thought it would be hard to find trees bigger than those in the Andrews Forest where I am working, but the Redwoods boggled my mind. Although not much taller than the tallest Douglas Firs in the Andrews, the coastal sequoias are many times greater in diameter.
The canopy above.
We figured this was a good tree to portray just how monstrous these organisms are. It would have probably taken at least ten people stretching their arms out to encompass the circumference of this tree.
Sarah climbs up a rooted section among sword fern.
It just looked so hug-able.
A fallen tree (perhaps centuries ago) had been broken down from the inside out so that it created a tunnel about 30 or 40 meters long across a gully. If you really wanted to you could definitely crawl all the way through.
I am checking out a gigantic tree gutted by fire, perhaps as a result of a lightning strike.
Sarah looks so small in the distance (left side) among these trees.
A funky white snail along the trail.
Just some more big trees. I was amazed by how consistently enormous the trees are. It wasn't five or six big trees total, it was every single tree we saw along the hike was multiple times larger than anything back home.
The last couple miles of the hike we started spotting many of the Redwoods famous bright-yellow giant banana slugs. Sarah ate a lot of them.
To me this is the ultimate example of a "nurse log". The tree growing at the top of the picture is actually on top of a gigantic pile of decomposing wood from a tree that probably fell long before Europeans had reached America. The large snake-like thing in the foreground isn't actually a branch but a huge root that the new tree has sent down to the ground for more nutrients. The root itself was greater than a 2 feet in diameter.
The second part of the hike followed along the murmuring Bear Creek. No bears to be seen though.
Sarah and I get a picture inside of a tree completely hollowed out by fire, a surreal experience to stand inside a tree.
The temperature dropped significantly, and Sarah turned to multiple layers and a seat close to the fire for warmth.
Boiling some water for spaghetti!
Our campsite. If it wasn't cloudy we would have been able to see the ocean as the site was perched upon a ridge about a half mile hike/walk from the shore.
It poured rain all night long so in the morning we decided to break camp as soon as possible and pack up all of our soggy gear. The ocean however provided a welcoming view by the car.
As we were packing the car up a lady nearby pointed out a pair of whales just offshore. We watched them for about fifteen minutes as they would come up for air. Truly magnificent creatures, they were definitely an animal I hadn't planned on spotting. Above, an image taken from one of my videos, the two whales surface and one is clearing its blow hole.
Back by the ranger station in Prairie Creek a family of elk had wandered near the road, close enough for me to get a few photos.
The original plan was to get in another hike closer to the coast in the morning. But, due to heavy and continuous rain we decided to play it by ear. We did end up making the 12 mile down the road where they filmed Jurassic Park to try to get to the Fern Canyon trailhead. With the pouring rain, dark forest understory and prehistoric looking plants it definitely had the feeling of Jurassic Park.
At the trailhead a ranger informed us there was a day fee just to park there and we decided it wasn't worth it just to get soaking wet and cold before we had to drive for 5 more hours. This photo is looking upslope towards where Fern Canyon is located. I definitely want to make it back sometime in better weather for further exploration. This time however, we said goodbye to the Redwoods and started our drive inland and east towards our second stop at Lassen Volcanic National Park.
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