Redwoods National Forest

Huge is inadequate to describe these guys

I made my way up 101 until I hit the redwoods. I made a quick stop to check out the waves on the beach. I had never seen the ocean churn as much as it was that day. It looked closer to white-water rapids than waves.

One of the fun things about traveling is that you never know who you will run into. While checking out the waves, I got to talking with a couple of women from Minnesota. After chatting for a bit, the subject of "do you have a job" came up. After explaining my situation, one of the women said that if I needed a job, I should go talk with her son and tell him that she sent me. Her son, it turns out, is president of Rosemount. I received an offer to go work their after graduating college, but picked Ford instead. This is what makes traveling interesting!

I decided that since it was already pretty late I would find a place to camp. I made my way through the pitch black woods on a one lane dirt road in my car, and ended up at a camp near the beach. Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea that camping on the beach would be awesome, and all the sites were taken. I made my way back and settled at the second site. It was a meadow between a section of new growth forest and old growth.

I settled in and made my first fire for the entire trip! Everywhere else I had stayed was in their "no burn" season, so I hadn't had a chance to enjoy reading by the fire. So much fun, but firewood was $8 a bundle. Not the cheapest stuff! Plus, you couldn't gather wood (more on this later) so I settled for the one bundle and let it burn down to nothing.

Something about fire makes camping feel right.

By the light of my "not as big as I really wanted it" fire, I planned out the trails I would hit in the morning. I woke up early, drank my protein shake (for 32g of protein, not the chalky taste) and set out on the trail. It wasn't long before I found the "land bridge" I was supposed to cross.

Missing both the "land" and "bridge".

All the rain had raised the river to rainy season levels, and the path was cut off. I didn't really want to wade across the pool, so I turned back to find another trail.

The path I ended up taking was through a section of old growth. These trees were huge, as evidence by the stumps of the fallen ones.

That is my Nalgene tucked in there for scale. Not even the biggest one I saw.

This one split apart like lumber. Pretty cool seeing the different layers.

The trees actually depend on fires to clear away the underbrush and competition. They lack resin, which feeds fires, and have a damp bark. Fire can still damage them if there is enough brush nearby the tree. If the heartwood is damaged, the tree will die, but can possibly stay standing for years to come.

Holes like this are examples of "chimney trees", trees that have damaged heartwood.

This is why you can't gather wood. Trees can grow on top of their fallen brethren.

This is "Big Tree". Not the biggest, but pretty big all the same.

I made my way north to another campsite in the forest. I tried to take another path that had a "land bridge". Surprise!

Not much luck with bridges today.

The river here was pretty calm, so I decided I would wade across. That is until I got a few steps in and the rocks started to become not as stable. I also got a little freaked out when I saw little black things crawling around down there. My first assumption was that they were leaches, which made me hop our pretty quickly. Upon further inspection, I saw they were snails. Still didn't want to mess with them, so I turned back.

Got my feet wet! And maybe a little snaily.

I asked the park ranger if there was an alternate route and she gave me driving directions around the river to another opening to the trail.

A very elegant game of tree stacking.

Land bridge, from the other side.

I went back to my campsite and made some dinner. I forgot to take a picture earlier in the day, but here was my campsite. It was right by the river that the land bridge would have crossed. I eat with a father and son from Pennsylvania. The son was moving out to San Francisco because "Why not?". His dad was along for the road trip. They started up north and were working their way south. It sounds like they had had a pretty nice trip so far, but the weather was starting to interfere with their plans.

Mmmm, canned chili

It rained HARD that night. I stayed up a little reading my book, when around 8:30 you could hear this "CRACK, SNAP SNAP SNAP, BOOM". Yea, that was a tree falling in the woods. Pretty freaky. I heard two more fall that night.

I woke up the next day to continue on my travels, but my tent was soaked. I had to pack up everything in the rain as fast as I could, throw it into the car, and get on the road.

Redwoods Pictures