Redwoods Pt. 2

At the bottom of the valley, we stopped by this stream to eat some trail mix and relax a bit.  A while later as we hiked back through this area on our way out of the valley, a herd of elk had just emerged from the woods


Some crazy moss growing on this tree.  Crazy.


Driving through a forest of giant trees kind of makes you feel like you were riding on a speeder bike on Endor.  Kinda.  Sorta.


At the end of the day, we took one last hike down to overlook where this river meets the ocean.  Where we camped that night was just on the other side of the river, up on the cliffs above the ocean.

The Pacific Ocean and me.

Redwood National Park

On Wednesday, my brother and I traveled up to Redwood National Park and the surrounding state parks, just about as far north as you can go in California before you get to Oregon.  We camped that night up on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean.  It was a free walk-in campsite, which we were especially grateful for as for some reason all California state parks charge an outrageous $35 just to pitch a tent for the night.  Below is the first round of pictures from the park(s), and I intend to post more.



Just after entering the national park, we pulled over in the morning fog to walk on the beach a bit.  Both of us dared the waves to wash far enough ashore to get us wet.  I won, Cody lost.  He waited a bit too long when one was coming right at us and got his feet and pant bottoms wet.  I ran, and got away.


We drove down into this valley and hiked a few more miles into the bottom of it to walk amongst some of the most ancient and largest trees the park has to offer.  Some are as old as 1,500 years!  To put that into perspective, the oldest would have been saplings when the Franks and Visigoths were fighting for the control of France after the collapse of the Roman Empire.


You could live in this tree.  Something big and mean (like a bear or mountain lion) probably does.


Looking up.


Thats me standing in the middle of the "Tall Trees Grove".  Perspective.

The California Coast (Stuck In LAX)

So today ends my California vacation.  I've been out here for the last week or so visiting my brother (who lives in Los Angeles) and taking in the sights of southern and northern Cali.  I've had a great time, and am bracing for the cold of Wisconsin that awaits me back home.  

Unfortunately, my arrival back in Madison is being delayed until tomorrow morning due to flight complications.  I was supposed to fly out of LAX at 2:20 today, connect in Denver, and then arrive back in Madison at 10:30 tonight.  When I arrived at the airport I learned that the flight to Denver had been delayed long enough so that I would miss my connecting flight to Madison.  The best that United Airlines could do was put me on a red eye flight from Los Angeles to Chicago, which wont leave until 11 tonight, will arrive in Chicago around 5:30 tomorrow morning, and I will then take a flight to Madison, arriving home tomorrow morning around 8:30.  While my flight plans do not necessarily make for interesting reading, let me just take this moment to publicly whine.  I will be in this airport for the next seven hours, and I've already been here for a couple.  

The one good thing about this situation is that it gives me plenty of Internet time to post pictures from the vacation.  I had to pay $8 for the Internet at LAX, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let it go to waste.  I actually tried to get United to get me a free password for the wireless system here since they inconvenienced me, but no dice.  I wish this airport had free wireless like Denver, where you just have to watch a short ad from a sponsor before logging on.  I wish I were going through Denver.  Ok, enough whining, here are some pictures from the California coast, north of San Francisco.



When we first made it to the Pacific Coast Highway (Hwy. 1) after leaving San Francisco early that morning, it was pretty damn foggy.  This was a vista point right where we entered the highway, eager to see the coast.


The day soon began to brighten up, and here you can see Cody standing above the mighty Pacific Ocean, just a little further on up the coast.


We stopped for lunch in some little coastal town.  The restaurant was up on the cliffs overlooking the ocean, and they were nice enough to let us take our food down to their garden on trays so that we could dine with a view.  Oh, and their clam chowder was pretty spot on as well.


A little further north, just south of Fort Bragg, we stopped at Russian Gulch State Park and went on a hike.  This was our first (of many) sighting of the gigantic banana slug.  Huge, cool slugs, pretty rad.


Russian Gulch also provided our first encounter with the gigantic Redwood trees.  Here is Cody standing next to an old Redwood stump, with a newer tree growing on top of it.  I believe the forests here were logged fairly heavily, but we got to see some ancient, humongous trees the next day in Redwood National Park...