If you've red this blog before you've probably noticed that I might get just a little sarcastic every once in a while. For that I blame Bill Bryson, a travel author whose books I've been reading on this trip. In his book The Missing Continent he writes about his travels in the United States, making snotty comments on things as he goes and getting disappointed at every turn. It's funny stuff, believe me. I'd like to quote things from the book but sadly I sold it for $2 in a second hand book store in Sydney. Still, I can vividly remember reading about his attempt to find a tree he could drive his car through. Supposedly that had been one of his long lasting childhood dreams, which he sought to complete by driving into a state park in southern California where they had the largest trees in the world. There his grief was palpable as he realized that the trees he was looking at were not the right ones. He should have been way up to the border with Oregon to reach the mighty redwoods that he was actually looking for.

The thought about driving a car through a tree had not occurred to me before reading that and even after having learned that such a thing was possible I didn't really set my mind to doing it. Still, after driving a few days along highway 1 in California we emerged from the woods at Leggett and were faced with several signs advertising "the world famous" Drive-Thru Tree. Sadly those signs were picturing a fifties convertible making the pass, just like Billy had described. We were driving a 12 feet tall RV that couldn't possibly pass through, I even sent Sini out to ask them about it. Thus we moved on without seeing the massive hole someone had carved into the living tree.

We were heading north towards Oregon and planning on seeing the redwood forests on the way. To this end we stopped at a state park along the way and asked the rangers there to call and ask if any of the campgrounds at Humboldt Redwoods State Park had any sites left. We were advised to go to Hidden Springs Campground where they still had four sites available and that's what we decided to do. Following a map they gave us we took highway 101 north until the Avenue of the Giants scenic drive where the campground was located. By the time we got there they still had one spot left and we paid $35 to call it ours for the night. We liked the place a lot, we had a fairly level surface to park the RV on, a picnic table next to a bear box and clean toilet facilities nearby. The showers were coin operated ($0.25 per minute) so we just used our own. In the evening they had a family friendly campfire program at the amphitheater where a park ranger gave a pretty good presentation of bats - the most misunderstood mammals. We enjoyed it, especially the beginning story where he told us how the bats came to be nocturnal. It was almost as epic as the Game of Thrones series, with power struggles over the throne of the jungle between mammals and birds, the lion and the hawk, and the deception of the bats. He also had a picture of baby bat burritos, which was cute.

Back to the point. We wanted to see the redwoods because they are the tallest trees in the world. Reaching heights of almost 400 feet (122 meters) and growing to be as old as two thousand years they are truly magnificent things. Seeing them from the inside of the car while driving towards the state park wasn't really all that exciting though since they are surprisingly narrow at the base. By that I don't mean that they are narrow, I just expected them to be truly massive to be able to grow so high. Turns out that they don't even grow their roots that deep, an information board somewhere said that they only go two feet into the ground. How can you stand that tall and not hold on to anything? Apparently you can, but not forever. Walking the Founders Grove Loop we passed the misplaced trunk of the Dyerville Giant, estimated to have been at least 362 feet (110 meters) tall, 17 feet (5.2 meters) in diameter and 52 feet (16 meters) in circumference. It might have been as old as 1600 years and weighed 1.000.000 pounds (450.000 kilograms) when it fell on March 24th 1991 due to heavy rain fall. The rain had caused the ground under a nearby tree to turn into mud, making it fall and causing another one to lean and eventually fall against the Giant, taking it down with it. Can you imagine playing dominoes with tiles that weigh 450 metric tons?

If nothing else manages to convince one of the massive size of the redwoods, then the enormous uprooted monsters laying on their backs will do the trick. The Founders Tree, the biggest one in the area still standing, is all of 346.1 feet (105.5 meters) tall, but I for one could hardly believe such a number. It just doesn't seem possible that the tree is actually quite a bit taller than the tallest structure in Helsinki. I just doesn't look that big. However, seeing the vertical roots of a fallen giant are enough to convince a person that these are in fact colossal beings. They dwarf everything else around them. Perhaps the problem is that there aren't too many things to compare them to. The 5% that remains of the once great redwood forests is mostly found in state and national parks where you obviously can't build a thirty story building next to the trees to serve as a comparison. That's of course a good thing, but a view tower or two wouldn't go amiss.

We did another short hike along the Rockefeller Loop where we amused ourselves by going through the trees our car couldn't fit through. Many of the biggest trees show clear signs of passed forest fires with charred bark and even massive caverns with black walls. You could easily set up camp inside some of the hollowed out trees that are still alive and well after being carved out by flames. As with any old forest, fire is an important force in renewing the plants but the redwoods are incredibly resistant to it. Even if the flames manage to get under the thick bark and set the sap on fire, the tree may still not fall. There were many that you could walk straight through, or at least push yourself through a small opening like Sini did, almost ruining one of her shirts with the charred wood. It was a truly magnificent place to have a little adventure on, sadly we didn't have time for a longer one.

The next morning we got back on highway 101 and headed north once more, this time towards Orick where we stopped at the Redwood National Park visitor center. Unlike other national parks this one was free for everyone to enjoy so we didn't get to use our annual pass. It's paid itself back to us already, so no worries. We asked a park ranger about good hikes in the park but instead of recommending any specific trails he just gave us the park newspaper and suggested picking a trail along the scenic Newton B. Drury Parkway that runs along the length of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. So in the end we didn't end up visiting the national park at all, except for driving through it on 101 before taking the turn to the more scenic detour.

While the redwoods really are magnificent beings, one can get just a little tired of them pretty quickly. The colossal trees only grow naturally in a narrow 40 mile wide and 450 mile long coastal strip from southern Oregon to southern Monterey County in California and even in that area they have been mostly cut down. But in the state and national parks they are everywhere. A forest of redwoods is basically just a forest, if you take a picture of the trees they look like normal pines because there's nothing normal to compare them to. The novelty wears out. Still, even a short time out of the densest forest roads helps to relieve some of the desensitization. Driving on the scenic detour once again brought in the fact that these trees are just enormous. There was more traffic here than there was in Humboldt Redwoods State Park and the cars that passed us provided the much needed contrast to the wide trunks. I guess it's no wonder someone thought of carving a tunnel through one of the trees.

We stopped at milestone 129.0 where the trailhead to South Fork Trail was located. The newspaper described a loop trail including the South Fork, followed by a part of Rhododendron Trail and ending with Brown Creek Trail. We usually opt for loop trails whenever possible and this was also rated as strenuous, which usually means less people. The trail was fairly easy in the end though, the path was narrow at points and there were a couple of places where we had to duck to get under fallen trunks of the massive redwoods. And as the picture above shows, Sini was also forced to pick one up and move it out of the way. With that done we followed the South Fork to its intersection with Rhododendron Trail where we encountered a sign telling us that the section we had planned to do was closed due to an unstable bridge. We decided to go check it out anyway and found the bridge to be in dire need of restoration, but still safe to pass and thus we continued over it. Moments later we encountered a couple with four daughters going the other way, asking if we thought the bridge was OK or not. Later an older couple asked the same thing. I told them that the structure didn't budge under my weight even with a daypack on so they would probably be fine. At least we didn't hear any screaming behind us as we kept on going.

As the name implies, Rhododendron Trail had a lot of the flowering plants along its length, some of which were still in bloom. The most scenic part of our loop was however the last bit on Brown Creek Trail where the sun broke through the canopy above us and colored everything a vivid rainforest green. I could easily see why the makers of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi had chosen a redwood forest to play the part of the moon of Endor where the Ewoks gave the imperial forces hell. Those were some vicious Stone Age teddy bears… The park newspaper had a picture of some Star Wars enthusiasts dressed up as Ewoks in the park, but they never hinted if any of the scenes in the movie had been filmed there or not. Thus I'm guessing they were not.

After finishing our loop we headed out of the forest and did another short scenic hike at the shore, called Yurok Loop Trail. It wasn't very long but the coastal scenery was nice enough, even though we didn't see any other animals than a large bird of prey floating on the rising currents. From there we continued on highway 101 to Crescent City where we had a long lunch at the harbor before driving the few remaining miles to highway 199 which we took all the way to Grants Pass, Oregon. Along the way we passed seemingly endless forests of progressively smaller trees. We were leaving the mighty redwoods behind us. As I said earlier, when bunched up into a group the redwoods make a normal looking forest, you only seem to be looking at an enlarged picture. But when you enter a normal forest after getting used to the giants, you feel like someone has been planting toothpicks into the moss. The close proximity to the redwoods made the normal forest look almost a meadow. That is how big the redwoods are.