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We had already decided after last year’s trip that this year we wanted to go back to the Redwoods and have a better look around. So that made things easy. The only mistake we made, and it was a relatively minor one, was waiting until October before we did it. When we had been there the year before, the weather had been beautiful — blue skies and fairly warm. This time around, we didn’t get so lucky, even though, I suppose, it was about the same time of year. The weather was more overcast and misty, at least for the first day or two. My memory was that it was raining the whole time, but the pictures say otherwise.
One of the drawbacks of writing trip logs 25+ years after the event is it’s very hard to remember what happened without some mental prodding. The pictures have been an excellent tool for that for many of the trip logs. But for this trip, not so much. What we took pictures of were trees. Lots of trees. And while the photos are all very nice, they do very little to help pinpoint locations or define the day’s activities. Although I suppose 90% of the days activities were driving to where there were redwoods and getting out and walking around amongst them. Which I remember being very pleasant, even on the days it was raining. And likely because of the weather, and perhaps because school was back in session, there were no crowds which made it even nicer.
I feel like it was a fairly short trip. Like a 3 day weekend. I’m sure we made it to redwood country on the first day since it’s not all that far. I have no memory of where we stayed either of the nights. There is only a single picture of a campsite but I believe we stayed 2 nights in the area and in the same spot. Possibly at the same camp ground as the year before which was at or near Patrick Point. Odds are pretty good we got a reasonably late start and drove down to wherever the campsite is without stopping any place interesting.
What we do remember about the campsite was the first night, we found a nice sandy spot along a river. It was overcast and misty as I said and during the night it rained. At one point Les woke up and noticed the floor of the tent was mushy and undulating. Like a waterbed. Wait… like a waterbed. There was water and a fair amount of it, under the tent. I think it was welling up from the beach as opposed to a newly created river. But either way, it was going to be a problem and fairly soon.
So, in the middle of the night, we got out in the rain, unstaked the tent and dragged it, and it’s contents up the hill, across the road, and to a higher and dryer location. No harm done, in the sense that nothing (besides us) got wet. But a bit more excitement than one plans on while sleeping.
We spent the next day walking through redwoods. I’m fairly certain we were in the Jedediah Smith State Park this day. From what I can tell looking at our pictures and pictures from Google, they look similar enough to corroborate this. It was overcast but not raining. We had brought along big ‘golf-style’ umbrellas and Les thought it would be fun to take pictures with them. So we did. Not all, but many. I especially like the ones of Les walking along a big tree branch with his umbrella, looking like Karl Wallenda (the famous tight rope walker).
We walked along (and in some cases in) a river with a fairly wide ‘beach’ of rocks. It let you kind of step back from the trees and get some perspective. When they’re all so big, you kind of lose the sense of it. When you can pull back a bit, and get a view of someone standing in front of them where you can actually see to the top, it really brings home how big they are. Very majestic.
I seem to recall that the tallest tree in the world was in that park somewhere and that maybe we could even see the top of it from where we were. But for some reason, distance or rain or something, we didn’t go to it.
I also believe (and the pictures seem to confirm) we spent some time at the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. It has a distinctive orange dirt on the paths. Given the limited time I know we spent on the trip and the geography, it’s likely we spent time at both locations on the same day. So we probably drove up to Jedediah, which is farther north, then stopped at Lady Bird Johnson Grove on our way back to the campsite.
That evening we took a walk along the trail by the beach and saw a big herd of elk. Very picturesque in the warm glow of the fading light. And luckily, this time around, we were not robbed while we were gone by the varmint cong (raccoons). I suspect we learned our lesson from the year before and put the food in the car before walking. They may be quite adept at getting into boxes and opening up Pop Tart wrappers, but they have not yet mastered the art of breaking into cars (and woe to us all when they do).
And I think that was it. I think we headed home the next day, stopping to see some trees (somewhere) along the way. I know we stopped along the coast in northern California where we got a couple of nice pictures. And we stopped at (but didn’t go into) the Trees of Mystery. We of course stopped to see the giant Paul Bunyan and Babe statues. We’re suckers for large kitcshy objects (see Australia log). Interesting that a ‘tree’ attraction would use Paul Bunyan as a mascot of sorts, considering he was not what you’d call a friend of trees. More sort of a ‘he who must not be named’. It reminds me of the bumper sticker take-off of the ubiquitous yellow Trees of Mystery bumper sticker they must stick on every car that leaves the place given how many you see, that says ‘Stumps of Mystery’. Cracks me up. Score one for the environmentalists.
The last place we stopped (at least for pictures) was somewhere along the Oregon-California border by the Smith River. It was late afternoon and the sun turned the water golden. The pictures didn’t really do it justice (although they aren’t bad). One of the drawbacks of our travels during this time was digital photography hadn’t been invented yet and we were still pretty stingy with the number of pictures we took. Ah well.
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