The Avenue of Giants & Pacific Northwest Coast

From Mendocino, CA, we drove inland to 101, also known as Redwood Highway. Our first destination was Humboldt Redwoods State Park - a redwood forest that has an auto tour. When you enter the park, you pick up a map with about eight stops marked. You then drive through the park and stop at each noteworthy spot. The drive is aptly named The Avenue of Giants.

The redwood trees are just... breathtaking. Awe-inspiring. They give you a little sense of just how long life has been on this planet and how you are just a blip - a few rings in the trunk - in a redwood's life. They can live up to 2,000 years and some up to 5,000 - just a fraction of how long life has been on earth, but more than twenty times as long as humans live. Walking among them in this forest was truly a spiritual experience. As usual, pictures don't do it justice. Maybe we need a better camera. Either way, I highly encourage you to see the redwoods in person if you can.

The Humboldt Redwoods are a protected old-growth forest, meaning that they can never be logged and have trees of all different ages. This allows for a diverse ecosystem beneath the tree canopy and a more varied, beautiful forest view. Logging is a huge industry in the Pacific Northwest, and even though loggers plant "second-growth" forests, the damage done and the loss of diversity is saddening. These man-made forests have trees that are all the same height and age which means that they block out all sunlight, and plants and animals cannot thrive beneath them. However, I would certainly rather them plant new trees to replace the ones they cut down.

After passing through the Humboldt Redwoods, we stopped overnight in Eureka, California. This town sprung up during the lumber industry boom during the 1850s and has many old Victorian homes still standing from that era. In the morning, we walked around the town center and waterfront for a bit before heading north to more national parks and redwood forests.

Our first stop after Eureka was Patrick's Point State Park. The highlight of this park is its short hikes to incredibly scenic water/cliff views. When we arrived, there was a thick layer of fog hugging the coast, but we didn't mind the obstructed views. The fog began to lift, and we spent a few hours checking out the different trails and viewpoints.

From Patrick's Point we drove toward the Redwood National Park, but on the way we stopped to observe some elk!

We spent less time in the Redwood National Park, but we saw some even bigger, older trees here than we did yesterday. Again, amazing. The tree in the first two pictures below is reputed to be one of the biggest trees on record with a 21-foot diameter.

From here, we headed up the coast into Oregon. Here are a few pictures from viewpoints along the gorgeous Oregon Coast:

 

Up next: Portland!