Back on Tuesday 7^th October and our first day in California. Redwood National Park was our first stop. We woke up to clear blue skies and headed into Crescent City at the northern most part of Redwood National Park. Stopped at the visitor centre to pick up the boys’ Ranger packs and met the most unhelpful lady who basically didn’t give us much to go on! This has been our first negative experience in any of the parks we’ve visited and we were really put off by it.  I think also we were tired and having been in the States only 3 weeks we’d already been half way across the country in one direction and back across it in the other! We were desperately in need of a bit of down time.

The reason we are now apparently zooming around is that we have to be in Arizona by the end of November. The kids and I are going to ‘move in’ to Dad & Carol’s house down there while John flies back to England to do the Millies. So that means we now have only 6 or so weeks to get all the way down the West coast and then across to Vegas and the Grand Canyon as well as any of the other National Parks in that area that we are so desperate to see.  Needing to make some tough decisions about what we can realistically do and see in the next few weeks while not rushing around and actually putting us under too much pressure and therefore reducing everyone’s enjoyment!!  Anyway, as I’ve said before these are nice problems to have and we are happy to leave a few things that we’ll do next time we come to the USA!!

Back in Redwood. The beautiful summers day disappeared suddenly into the most intense fog I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t see 10’ in front of the van. Apparently it comes and goes like that. We kept hearing “If you don’t like the weather in North California wait 5 minutes and it’ll change!” and that certainly was our experience all the way down this bit of coast. But that fog helps the redwoods thrive! The parks are spread out and so it’s hard to get a sense of it a whole like others we’ve visited. However, the trees are UNBELIEVABLE!!

We stopped at The Trees of Mystery and got our first real experience of the incredible trees. We couldn’t miss it due to the massive stature of renowned lumberjack Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox – it’s apparently one of the biggest tourist draws on the coast. Great and all but we realised 10 minutes down the road that you can just walk amongst the exact same trees without having to pay an entrance fee!! However the one thing they do have which is great is their Sky Trail gondola, which takes you up over the treetop canopy to an incredible view. Best of all actually was the hike down again. We spurned the offer of taking the gondola again and borrowed a walking stick each from the top and ignored the sign that ‘Advanced Hikers Only’ and took on the mile downhill walk. It was great. Much slipping and stumbling down the rocky path through the trees but we loved it. Best of all finding hundreds of bright yellow Banana Slugs that are well known about these parts!!

We hadn’t known how long we would want to spend in the Redwoods and weren’t sure at what stage we would tire of oohing and ahhhing about the size of them. They are incredible and mind blowing to think that some of them are 2000 years old and over 300’ high. But we were shattered and so found a campsite at the mouth of the Klamuth River and thought we’d have a quiet afternoon. The kids made friends immediately with 2 boys who live here on the campsite, DJ and Tyler. We didn’t seem them for hours as they disappeared off round the site and nearby woods on their bikes. John got chatting to their Dad Tim and his wife Jessica, and the kids starting badgering us to stay an extra night.

So we did. This lovely family couldn’t have been nicer to us and they took us to the beach, all of us on our bikes. Beautiful spot, which we would never have found without them. No one there. It was the most incredible afternoon. The kids had a great time fishing and playing with their new mates. Most incredible was the wildlife. We sat on the beach and in the couple of hours we were there we saw…. Seals & sea lions right up at the shore. Orca whales and grey whales swimming right past us. Grey pelicans, California condors and turkey vultures. All up close. Just at shores edge. Like an episode of wildlife programme. Expected David Attenborough to appear at any moment.  Then we spent the evening round their campfire! Really lovely and just what we all needed!

We managed to drag the boys away on the morning of Thursday 9^th October and had a great day exploring more of the Redwoods. Went to another visitor centre and this time met the most lovely and helpful of Rangers who spent ages telling us all about the park and the trees which was great.

So I think this was most of it… Redwood National Park was established in 1968 and later enlarged at a cost of $500 million it protects the 100,000 acres of redwood forest.

We visited the Lady Bird Johnson Grove and the Tall Trees Grove where the worlds tallest tree stands and the 370 foot Liberty Tree with a trunk over 14 feet across!! We saw Big Tree, which really was. But this was our favourite tree (cue childish giggling!!).

The redwoods are miraculous really. They grow from a tiny cone no bigger than an olive!! On the side of each tree they grow a burb so that if anything happens to the tree they are able to clone themselves and so a new tree grows!! Their roots are only 12’ deep which is incredible considering the enormous height they grow to. They help each other to grow by interlocking their roots underground and their branches above ground, hugging each other to make them stronger. Isn’t that lovely!! But most exciting of all the trees were used as filming location of Return of the Jedi when they flew on those strange cycle things…and Jurassic park was filmed in   parts here.

They are amazing and very very beautiful. We all loved it in the end and felt very small and blown away by these incredible trees…