Redwoods...lots of them!

We are camping near the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, so we stopped at the visitor center where we watched a movie which explained a lot about how redwoods grow, plus we talked with a great ranger who helped us plan our day.

We left there and took the Howland Hills Road, which is a 10-mile ride along a dirt road through a dense redwood forest.  It's pretty smooth but very dusty, so we kept it at 10 MPH. (There goes my car wash!)  Also, the road is often one-way, so someone has to keep pulling off for the other to pass.  Fortunately, there are lots of turn-outs and folks are nice about it and take turns.

Our main stop was walk through the Stout Grove, and we were early enough to find a place to park.  Everyone was walking around looking up with mouths agape, taking pictures, and swapping cameras to get ourselves in the picture.  It's really hard to show the immense size of these trees, so I tried to get a person in as many as possible.  There's also no way to show the whole height of a tree in a picture.  The Giant Sequoia trees are bigger around, but these Coast Redwoods are taller.

On our way south of Crescent City we stopped at a couple of ocean overlooks, but it was still cloudy and we didn't see any whales, so we moved onto another redwood forest road.  This one has stops for "Big Tree" (tallest in the forest) and "corkscrew tree".  We also saw elk at Elk Meadow.  I'm still looking for a banana slug!

Looking up...

Kids in the roots.
The roots are not deep but are very wide and mingle with the neighboring trees.

Redwood burl...they are everywhere!

There are lots of trees on the ground.
New trees grow from the roots or stumps.

Tommie among the burls

I took the car for size reference.

Isn't he cute?
I was looking at the blackberries and saw him.

Corkscrew tree

Tommie in the corkscrew tree

Big tree

See how well they are camouflaged?

Elk

Elk with velvet

Baxter tore up his bear so we got him another one at a thrift shop!