The Little MegaVacation That Would

This will be my final ode to the Redwoods.  To the little megavacation that would!!!  It was a journey that was a loooooooooooooong time in the making and complicated in the planning.  We bought our plane tickets with a voucher we received when the shutdown in April 2020 kyboshed our D.C./Shenandoah travel plans.  Perhaps all the upsets and delays--the ongoing pandemic uncertainty, twice cancelled flights, a landslide blocking one of the campgrounds we reserved necessitating Matt to develop a Plan B, wildfires filling the air everywhere with smoke--made it feel all the more enriching when we finally got there.  The harder the battle the sweeter the victory, as the line goes. 

It felt like a dream come true.  It still does.  I can't hardly believe it.  My battery is recharged.  My joycup runs over.  We had brilliant good fun.  It almost felt like old times.   

The root balls and downed trees really help me conceptualize just how big the redwoods truly are.  When they're standing 200-300 feet up it can be hard to really get a proper sense of it.  They're big, sure, but seeing them on the ground really drives home just how BIG they are.

We call it the Redwoods Megavacation.

I'm fairly certain this one is from the Franklin K. Lane Grove.

We flew out of Bozeman because it was considerably cheaper, plus we got to visit Matt's brother that way.  It was crazy to see the various wildfires from the airplane as we flew over the arid west.  I'd never seen anything like that before.  The columns of smoke punching up through the clouds looked sort of like a nuclear explosion.  

I've never flown when it was so smoky before.  Even when we couldn't see the acute mushroom clouds of smoke the landscape below was draped in a lacy haze of it.

We flew into San Francisco and enjoyed the heck out of our drive through the city, but didn't stop anywhere.  Matt pointed out theaters and streets and other points of interest that he recognized from his mental database of factoids about the Grateful Dead, art, hippies, etc.  The houses are so tall and packed together, perched on every hill.  It was really something to see!  So different than where I live!  We drove up the steepest city street I've ever seen and laughed about how Matt's old Geo Prism would never have been able to cut it in Frisco.  Ha!  

The Golden Gate Bridge comes into sight.

The view as we drove north across the bridge.  In both photos the top of the bridge is lost in the fog.

After a slight navigational error that had us cross Mission Street three times and almost took us over the Oakland Bay Bridge we successfully found our way across the Golden Gate Bridge as intended.  The bridge was, rather predictably, wreathed in fog.  That seemed classic.  The whole bridge did.  It was shorter than I expected though and soon was in the rearview mirror as we continued north up Highway 101.  The drive was vineyard after vineyard for miles.  I find their unnatural green symmetry rather appealing.  It reminds me of the ornate gardens I saw in Europe.  The vines were laden with green and red grapes.

One of the countless vineyards we passed on Highway 101.

The first night we camped at Standish-Hickey State Park, making a pit stop along the way for groceries, camp fuel, and a few other essentials...like a selection of local beers.  I don't have a lot to say about our stay at SHSP because we arrived around dusk with enough time for dinner and a fire and then left at dawn the next day in our excitement to get hiking in the old-growth redwood groves.  It was a nice, albeit fairly rowdy, Friday night campground.  Call me crazy, but unless you're playing a real instrument I don't know why people would want to listen to music in the woods.  I want to hear the crickets and birds and the leaves rustling in the wind and all that.  People did quiet down eventually and we slept like babies after our big day of travel, so excited to wake up and be in the redwoods already.  Masks are still legally required indoors in California, including the bathrooms and common areas of the campgrounds.  That was cool.  Montana has, to my frustration, enacted some of the stupidest COVID laws and it is easy to forget that it isn't the same everywhere...but I digress. 

A fantastic morning-time-tea-drinking-bird-song-listening spot at our campsite in Standish-Hickey.

The next morning we promptly broke camp and set off on Highway 101.  We almost immediately stopped again when we encountered the 2,000 year old Grandfather Tree right off the bat.  There had been plenty of more modest redwoods along the drive from Frisco, but this was the first true biggie that we laid eyes on.  

Matt and the Grandfather Tree.

 As we progressed north we hopped off 101 and went up the delightfully narrow and windy Avenue of the Giants (a.k.a. State Route 254) that runs mostly parallel to it.  That is a really, really cool drive.  The giant trees were like a tunnel in a lot of places, meeting overhead to enclose the road in a sort of perpetual sun-dappled twilight that was quite magical.  There were adorable little towns dotted along the route.  We stopped at a roadside stand in Pepperwood and bought sweet corn, zucchini, onions, peppers, and some amazingly tasty homemade blackberry popsicles.  The producer invited us to take a stroll through her gardens which were lush and vibrant with flowers.

Her popsicles were just three ingredients: blackberries, sugar, and water.

The Avenue of the Giants is aptly named because there were also loads of old-growth redwood groves to stop and enjoy.  That morning we visited the Franklin K. Lane Grove, enjoyed the Mahan Plaque Trail (where Matt almost stepped on a tree frog!), and had lunch at the Founders Grove.  At the northern terminus of the Avenue of the Giants we got back on the still remarkably scenic Highway 101.  We stopped in the town of Eureka to top off our supplies with some specialty items from the natural market.   We also enjoyed some ice cream on the waterfront and had a neat encounter with some Big Foot-related art.

Tall Trees Trail

We arrived at our campsite at the Elk Prairie Campground after a beautiful drive with oceanic view that actually made Matt laugh out loud at one point.  It all seems so extraordinarily beautiful and surreal for landlocked people like us, I guess.  The Elk Prairie Campground is part of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, which is in turn managed as part of Redwoods National Park.  The jurisdiction is a little confusing compared to most of the national parks we've visited, not that it mattered one bit.  

The Revelation Trail

As we set up camp the birds there were very entertaining, especially the Steller's Jays.  We watched a squirrel try to steal a nut from one jay.  The squirrel was unsuccessful, but we admired the bold ambition demonstrated in the attempt.  Straight away we spotted a new-to-us species hopping about in the undergrowth--a vibrant yellow Wilson's Warbler with his contrasting black cap.  There were banana slugs all over the place.  After some relaxing (and wildlife viewing) we decided to check out the Elk Prairie/Davison Trails that departs from the campground.  The forests are so verdant and vibrant.  The redwood groves were carpeted--and I mean carpeted--with Redwood Sorrel, a happy shamrock-like plant.  As we hiked, the forest was largely dominated by redwoods, but there were noticeable pockets where they were absent.  The ecological webs and microclimates were interesting.

I'm not joking.  The sorrel was a veritable carpet!  This is from the Rockefeller Grove.

A close up of the Redwood Sorrel.

Around the fire later that night a fog/mist rolled in from the ocean.  It was an otherworldly experience.  The microscopic droplets would light on our skin with an unusual, though not unpleasant, almost electrical or ticklish sensation.  It stood in quite a contrast to the warmth of the flames.  It wasn't like when rain falls at all.  It was more like the droplets were settling on us.  They also sparkled in the moonlit air.  We enjoyed the bizarreness of it.

The moisture out there allows a lot of stuff to get big from slugs to mushrooms to redwoods!

The next morning Matt was already gone from the tent when I awoke, which is fairly typical for us.  He was pretty excited when I emerged, telling me that he could immediately lead me to a flock of 40 quail!  So, I grabbed my binoculars and off we went.  He wasn't exaggerating.  The California Quail were pecking and scratching about like a big ol' flock of chickens near the meadow that gives Elk Meadow Campground its name.  They were terribly amusing to watch.  I love their little dangly-bob, especially when they run.  We also ID'd another new-to-us bird called a Band-Tailed Pigeon.  We hiked the gorgeous Revelation Trail before returning to camp for breakfast.

Technically this is one tree.  A very conjoined one, but one tree none the less.

We spent the afternoon hiking the Cathedral Trees Trail and a few connecting trails, making a big meandering loop through those majestic giants.  These were some spectacular groves.  It is so-named because of the way the redwoods in that area grow in clumps.  It is not unusual for a redwood to have a conjoined twin or even a triplet, but in the Cathedral Trees grove it is taken to the next level.  We encountered one redwood that was at least 15 sizeable trunks merged into one octopus-like MEGAtree.  They become "cathedralized" when they encounter fire, mostly, or some other catastrophe.  They get sort of hollowed out, creating a room in there!  We could walk inside many of these cathedrals of nature--walls of wood towering overhead, reaching for the sky.  Some of these interior spaces were quite spacious, bigger than our livingroom at home for sure.  Despite being basically gutted, they were still growing, too.  Resilient things, those redwoods.  

Me peeking out from inside a hollowed out redwood on the Mahan Plaque Trail.

Then we moseyed on to Gold Bluffs Beach Campground where we set up shop for the next two days. 

The way the surf moves and churns in slightly varied patterns is so nifty.  That's Matt down the beach there on the right.

We had a glorious time there.  I love the beach.  The ocean dazzles me.  Camping there exceeded my expectations.  We made a daytrip inland to hike the Tall Trees Trail.  Gold Bluffs was also just down the road from Fern Canyon which was a superbly cool and unique hiking experience.  Plus, Matt had to drive our vehicle over a few tiny stream crossings to get there.  That was new to us.  We added the 199th bird to our life list when we ID'd the White-winged Scooter.

Matt pointing out something along the Tall Trees Trail.

After Fern Canyon we returned to the beach and broke camp.  We stopped at the day-use area on our way out so that I could have one more go with my kite.  Gosh, I love flying my kite on the beach.  The Gold Bluffs area was the northernmost point on our Megavacation so we started our return trip south.  We spent the next two nights at the Baxter Environmental Campground.

Dual string kites are super fun.  

As we were leaving Baxter, Matt noticed there was a Pioneer Cemetery marked on the map that appeared to be just up the road from us.  So we stopped there and scoped out the history and the stonework.  Then we drove back to the Avenue of the Giants and found some more groves to hike through.  

A very moss-fuzzed puppy adorning one of the graves at the Pioneer Cemetery.

We got rather mixed up on the Rockefeller Grove trail after inadvertently following a connector trail instead of sticking to the Rockefeller loop.  To be fair, it was pretty poorly marked.  It was fine-- though it turned an easy stroll into a sweaty hike.  We got to see more of that part of the forest than we'd planned though.  When we returned to camp we actually took advantage of the fact the state park campgrounds in California have showers.  We checked in to the Albee Campground and, after hitting the shower, set up the tent and relaxed a while at camp--drawing, journaling, coloring--until the flies drove us bonkers and set us in motion again.  

Big Tree is such an original name, don't you think?  Ha!  For the record, it was no where near the biggest tree we saw on the trip.  The "named trees" are kind of funny like that.  They're not necessarily the most impressive specimens, but they are epic and easy to get to without a lot of walking so they're popular with tourists.  We actually stumbled upon Big Tree by accident.  We were making intertwining loops on the trails in the area.  Named or not, the trees in these redwood parks are almost universally grand and impressive!

We drove to the nearby Big Tree area for a hike and then returned to the Founders Grove--where we'd stopped for a picnic on the way to Standish-Hickey--and enjoyed another fabulous stroll through those magnificent trees.  The Founders Grove had a little booklet with numbered stops highlighting ecology and history and other interesting tidbits from the surrounding forest.  Matt and I love those sort of self-guided nature trails.  One of the highlights on this one was an albino branch on an otherwise typical redwood tree.  We encountered two tiny--and quick!--Oregon Garter Snakes on our hikes.

On the trail in the Founders Grove.

Back at camp we enjoyed our final campfire and toasted the magnificent time we had with a few more regional beers.  I had been a touch fearful that after the solitude we'd had at Baxter we'd not enjoy our final night of camping in the redwoods as much.  I need not have worried.  We had quiet neighbors, aside from a little dog barking, and enjoyed the Albee Campground very much overall.  

Western Hemlocks are sometimes called "Octopus Trees" because of the way they spread their roots.  They make use of the downed redwoods as nurse logs.  It was really cool to see all phases of the process, especially after the nurse log has been all used up so the roots were just exposed and hanging out there in mid-air.

We woke early the next morning and promptly broke camp so that we could spend the entire day lollygagging our way back south down Highway 1, also called the Shoreline Highway.  We knew it would be slower going and make for a longer drive back to San Francisco.  We also knew it would be even more beautiful and figured if we stopped regularly we could break it up and make a very enjoyable day of it. 

The Shoreline Highway is pretty well named.  Most of the time, and especially on the northern end of it, the ocean is RIGHT there.

A flock of Brown Pelicans fly over one of the beaches we stopped at on our way back south.  There were also groovy sea stacks there, many with tunnels and arches carved through them.

We stopped at a few beaches and overlooks as we made our way south.  We had a picnic and explored some sea stacks at low tide.  We meandered down the coast.  It was a crazy and crazy-beautiful roadtrip.  At points the ocean was a stomach-churning sheer drop off the shoulder of the road with no guard rail or anything to obscure the view.  It reminded us of the Beartooth Highway, but...on the edge of an ocean cliff instead.  We finally arrived in Frisco some six+ hours later.

Water can do amazing things given enough time.

The switchback nature of Highway 1, coupled with the fact it clings to the edge of the cliff really is reminiscent of the Beartooth Highway.

We checked into our hotel near the airport, ordered vegan pizza for delivery, and watched Dazed and Confused on TV while we packed.  Packing suitcases full of camping gear--tent, hatchet, trekking poles, cast-iron skillet and all--sure is a trick!  We slept like babies.

There was a cool science and math exhibit in the airport at San Fransciso. The collection of old calculators and "rubik's cubes" were my favorites.

Our last morning of the megavacation started with a simple diner breakfast before hitting the airport.  Our travels homeward were superbly uneventful.  On the final driving leg of the trip we enjoyed a stunning pink sunset and then chased the rising moon all the way home.  Gall dang were those cats excited to see us after ten days.  

In full disclosure, half the reason the cats are excited we're home is they can go lounge in the backyard.  Ginger more so that Johnny, but that's the truth.

Ginger was pretty adamant that we were not going to pack our bags again without her consent/knowledge.