Northern California: Part III
I do feel a little guilty for piling on the pictures but we really did have a good time in northern california. Part I should be subtitled "Rainy San Fran", Part II is "Eureka! Redwoods!", and this Part III is really "Avenue of the Giants, a.k.a. You thought the other redwoods were big? Get a load of this!"
In our journey so far, we have covered the first three days of our trip. It's now Christmas Eve and we hang out with Jeff and his family that morning before we take off southwards.
Here's Sarah Kate and Sam, Jeff and Tammy's children:
After our farewells, we head back south down the 101. Unbelievably, the weather held and we had our second sunny day in a row!
As Jeff advised, we looked for the Avenue of the Giants which is part of the Humboldt State Park, got off the highway and went on the hunt for more redwoods! (We were promised huge ones! Yes, the ones posted before were not the "huge" ones!!)
We stop at the Humboldt State Park little visitor stop, and picked up some pamphlets. Old-growth redwoods, according to the pamphlets, are those which are 400-500 years old or older and the Avenue of the Giants would showcase some of the oldest living organisms in the world! We noticed a marked temperature drop once we got in the forest.
Some random images as we drive down the Avenue of the Giants
The immortal tree. As the sign says, it's estimated to be 950-1000 years old, and has a diameter of over 14 feet. Can we say "oh my god!!!" It's truly humbling. Don't be fooled - it just looks like 2 trees there, it's really only one big mother of a tree!
Here's Vin standing by a cross-cutting of a tree. May I remind you that Vin is 6' 7" (2 meters to those of you on the metric system). Look how big that tree is around! It's way taller than Vin!
The bark is really quite red, and damp and spongy to the touch. Not at all what I had expected.
Then, we saw signs to the "Drive Thru Tree"!! OK, I admit it was very touristy of us, but we turned in and paid our 3 bucks to drive through a tree. (Hey, when else are we going to do this?).
There was a car ahead of us so that's what it looked like as we waited our turn:
A nice lady took a picture of us since we were pretty much trapped in the tree and couldn't get out to take pictures of ourselves.
The view if you looked up through the tree:
And finally, as promised, Sila frolics with the redwoods. The first is a picture of me (so you can see it is me) standing by the tree. The next is me standing by the same tree, but with the full effect of the tree trunk:
After our adventures through the Avenue of the Giants, we get back on Highway 101 and drive on down to Santa Rosa, our next destination. Tune in next time for Part IV: The Christmas Seals?
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