Jedidiah Smith Redwood National Park




 Wednesday, July 18th, 2012  The Redwoods National Park

We packed up our camp this morning and headed North.  Today was a big driving day as we headed to the Redwoods National Park.  The roads we were traveling up the coast were absolutely gorgeous.  I think the kids are getting tired of us saying, "WOW!  Look at that".  Now they all just say...oohhhhh.  I am not sure they even look all the time :) 

On on way, we past a little road side store that said it was home of the famous Bigfoot.  Jonathan has a good friend at school who they like to share storied about Big Foot with each other and we unfortunately missed his birthday while we were gone.  So....we stopped to pick Shea up something from Big Foot :)  Maybe we will actually see one on one of our hikes. :)We traveled until we got to Crescent City where we stopped at a visitation center and asked about hikes.  They recommended the Stout Grove trail so we took a logging trail to the trail head and it is SOOOOOOO beautiful.  We stopped several times as there were trees that we JUST had to get pictures of.





Can you find the kids?

We saw this tree before we got to the trail and just had to get a picture of it.  Not many trees can make our kids look like ants :)  There are so many trees everywhere and it is just hard to believe they are so big. Again, the camera just cannot do justice with the size of these trees...but we will try.

Meet the Banana Slug!

A native animal to the Redwood is the Banana Slug....it is actually a cute yellow little slug, unlike its ugly-looking cousin.  The banana slugs like to eat anything except Redwood seeds and seedlings- so the forest and the slug get along famously.  Jonathan took a liking to the banana slugs as he has a big yellow sleeping bag (and looks a lot like a slug).  We were able to see quite a few little banana slugs.  Don't you think they are cute???



THIS was a GIGANTIC
tree!



This was one of the most amazing hikes we had if that is even possible.  We truly felt like we were in another world and there were no people besides us around.  We think that the Star Wars VI with the Ewoks was filmed somewhere in the Redwoods and we really expected Ewoks to pop up from behind any tree.  We loved walking through these Giant trees and so enjoyed the atmosphere that they gave. 



The kids taking the tree to see
where it leads.



We had a couple adventures off the trail as there were trees here and there that had fallen over.  As they are so tall, they go for a long way and as they are so big, they are so easy to walk on....kind of like a sidewalk.  Jonathan named them the "slug walks".  Not sure why as we did not see slugs on them (though I am sure they were around).  We would take a tree to its end, explore the woods around it and then head back down to continue on the hike.  The kids LOVED it when there were trees to climb on and there were many.



The fort the kids loved playing on.



As we walked along, we found a clump of trees (large trees) with some trees that had fallen among them which made the most excellent fort.  The kids had a blast clambering around the trees and were having a wonderful time playing here.  Annika was an Ewok and the boys were having huge battles...oh, they were in heaven running around and enjoying this beautiful place to play.  We stayed here for quite a while and later Dave and I ventured off a bit to see the river that was running close to the forest.  What refreshing air to smell and sight to see...ahhhhh!

A river runs through it!



 We loved being at this gorgeous place and felt like we were walking through the land of the Giants.  Dave claims that this is his top hike this trip so far (with many others a close second).  We took so many pictures here but they don't even begin to show you how magnificent these trees are....it is all we have though so we will leave you with some pictures.



Jonathan on top of a huge tree
that had fallen over.





Have you hugged your tree today?

We had talked about driving up the whole coast of Oregon but after looking at this more closely, it would take us 12 hours just to drive the distance.  So, we decided to push on tonight and get some miles covered more quickly by going inland.   Then the next day we would not have to drive so far and then enjoy driving along the coast.

These  trees are just SO BIG!!!

We drove until we got to Eugene, OR which was about 12:40am (yes, we were tired).  We stayed at a very nice Holiday Inn and were glad to get some sleep.