Roadtrip to California - Day 2 & 3 Humbolt Redwoods

We woke up on Sunday morning, ate some bagels, used our brand new french press, and took off from the Del Norte Coast Redwoods. I have to say when I first saw the north coast redwoods, I was a little dissapointed. I thought "oh yeah, I guess these trees are tall?" We drove to Patrick's Point State Park, with our pass saying we camped in a Cali State Park we got free access to any state park. Pretty rad. We decided to do a small short hike to Wedding Rock on the coast. On our small, easy hike I tripped over a root in the ground and fell hard to the ground. Scrapped up my hands and knees real good. My right knee was bleeding pretty bad and it freaked me out for a moment because I thought I was going to need stitches. I wasn't that upset about it, I think I just wanted to get to the stupid rock. By the time we made it to Wedding Rock my knee scrape stopped bleeding and I completely forgot about fall. The view was magnificent! Beautiful coastline and the Pacific Ocean that seemingly goes on for a lifetime. I think about boats out there, islands, and just how remote and vast the ocean must feel like when you can't see land.

We continued our journey to the Humboldt Redwoods, driving on a gorgeous HWY 101. When timing the trips on our atlas everything was so different when we were driving. Winding roads, avg speed of 40 mph. Nothing like the 60+mph I thought we would be traveling at. We stopped in a cute town just south of Avenue of the Giants. We found our campsite easily. The park ranger mentioned the bears in the area "are different and will want to hang with you so put your food in the car". We followed her rules, diligently. Our night was super relaxed. I got drunk on tecate and Brian and I played twenty questions.

We woke up the next morning, drank our french presse coffee and made bacon and eggs using Dave's camping stove. I love camping! I love camping in the redwoods. I constantly forgot how hugely tall the trees are. Every once in a while I would look up and giggle. The trees are just so freakin' giant! We did nothing on Day 3 except gawk at redwoods for about 6 or so hours. It was one of the most awesome moments of my entire life, there really are few words that describe how I feel about them. The redwoods are my new friends and I cant wait to visit them again.

We did nothing the rest of the day. Played a few games of rummy, drank beer, and made another successful fire. My time with Brian has been amazing, relaxing, fun, and enlightening.

Roadtrip to California - Day 1

Brian and I woke up at 3:30am on Saturday morning. Falling asleep wasn't easy, we had people at the house for some beers and chatting the night before. I woke up with a slight hangover but after a cold shower, it slowly faded away. We loaded up the car and hit the road by 4:10am. We drove straight to Portland, were we stopped at Albina Press for coffee and a delicious best ever huckleberry scone. Albina must have been open for only minutes since it was barely after 7am. The barista was so nice and excited to hear about our trip. She has only been in Portland for a year now but shared her enthusiasm for us visiting California (Cali transplant) for the first time. I feel like everyday I'm reminded at how rad Portland is. After Portland, we drove to Eugene, Oregon. Officially the most south we have ever been! We celebrated in the car by playing tunes loudly. Afterward, we stopped at a grocery store for camping food and lunch, realizing that Eugene would be the biggest city we would see for a really long time.

We headed for Florence, OR via Hwy 101. The drive included the beautiful countryside of Oregon and much of it's breathtaking coast line. Florence was great. It's a small coastal town that heeds some of the largest sand dunes in North America. Supposedly many dunes have been recorded to be around 300 feet tall (which I realize now are about as tall as the giant redwood trees Brian and I would see later). We paid $12 to hop into a dune buggy and ride around on these gigantic sand dunes. There were a ton of people riding the dunes, many on quads and motorcross bikes, far larger than the dunes Brian and I braved.

After an hour in the buggy, we hopped back in the car towards Del Norte Coast State Park. Our destination was still another 3 hrs away and by this time we have been driving for about 11hrs so we were really ready to get to camp and chill out. Finding the campsite was simple. We set up camp about an hour before sunset, made a fire, ate some chili, and drank some tecates. No bears sightings at this camp but they did have bear boxes. The air was moist and chilly but we fell asleep rather easily after such a long day of traveling. I woke up at 4am with the urge to use the bathroom but I was not getting up by myself to walk to the bathrooms alone in bear country were no bears have been sighted in some time but I get a feeling I will see the first in a while. So I fell back asleep...