We had set our alarms for 6 this morning. So much for that. It was warm in the sleeping bags! We wanted to leave kind of early, but then remembered that it wasn't that far to tonight's stop on the other side of the park. So we took our time packing up and went to Starbucks (again!) to catch up on everything. Then it was off to get some duct tape. That's how we do things. Duct tape fixes everything. And I can tape Dawn's mouth shut with it later if I need to! Better watch out, hopefully she doesn't have the same idea...
Then it was off to Redwood National Park. The park is a straight drive on 101. We took a few detours along the way. The first was to a little trail, that didn't lead to very much, since it was super foggy. It was supposed to be a coastal look-out trail, but we could hardly see the beach. Unfortunately, or fortunately, the fog burned off later in the day. So, from there, we kept driving, and decided to stop at another trail, which led to some huge trees. We took a picture with one- our arm span didn't even come close to the width of the tree- and this was only a stump... We kept going, and stopped at "The Big Tree", which they sort of memorialized, because back in the early 1900s, when the loggers wanted to knock it down, and someone wanted to make a dance floor on top of the stump, some wealthy people decided that was enough and wanted to protect it, along with others. We took a short trail, that was supposed to be a loop, but wasn't. It was muddy, so we didn't continue. We walked back and took the trail that was actually a loop. We posed with some more trees, and Robyn laid down on one of them. Now she thinks it's an even score. (I don't know if I'd say it's quite even. One jumped out at me and my camera and hit me in the mouth...Redwood:1.5, Hudaks:1) From there, we kept going, and were headed to an information center. We got there and it wasn't anything special, just a kiosk, so we kept driving. The center was supposed to be near herds of elk, but we didn't see any there. We kept going, and there was a sign that said to turn the radio to hear elk information. We did, and as we were listening, we saw a whole herd of elk grazing. It was really neat. There were tons of them in the area. That was the only herd we saw. We kept driving, and went over a bridge that had golden bear statues at the beginning and end, and there were tons of people looking over the edge. Since it was so crowded, we decided not to stop, but probably should have. We're thinking that there might have been some bears there, but kind of hoping not, because then we missed our chance to see them. We did finally stop at a Visitor's Center, and got our obligatory map and postcards. To bad it was at the other side of the park and we were leaving. The bird almost pooped on our head. That would have been most unfortunate. However, we did learn the difference between Coastal Redwoods (the trees here) and Giant Sequoias farther down the state. Redwoods are taller and (supposedly) skinnier, while Sequoias are wider. If these are the skinny trees, I can only imagine what the fat ones look like! Maybe we can make it out there to see them...
After the park, it was time to head for camp. We put the address in our GPS, but as we were driving down, we saw the sign for it. We almost missed it. Anyway, we set up camp, made some plans, and there's supposed to be a big bonfire across the way from us. It's off to San Francisco tomorrow!
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