The Redwood Forest Was Made For Me...

 and you, if you know my song reference! It was so exciting to go to California, although I'm not sure why. It's such an amazingly diverse state, and we didn't even go near the southern coast.

Here's me enjoying the Pacific near Crescent City. I feel like I became an expert in taking my own picture by the end of this trip!

The redwood forest was absolutely amazing. The trees are just so huge and majestic and old. When you walk among them in these peaceful, hushed groves, it is truly a holy moment.

And they are tall, too!

This is one of the tallest we saw. I can't wait to go see the General Sherman sequoia one day (maybe next summer?).

The absolutely coolest roadside kitschy thing we did....driving Ruby through that tree was totally worth the $5 admission fee. And since it was early in the morning and we were the only ones there, I did it twice!!!

I was so struck by these trees that I didn't take very many pictures, but I do know that I can't wait to go back and spend more than a day hiking and camping in Northern California. Thank heavens someone made an effort to preserve these gentle giants for our enjoyment.

Next up, our totally un-planned jaunt down the California coast from San Francisco to San Luis Obispo, including details of our mountain lion encounter!!

Back to the Road (Trip)

I've been posting tons of things about other travel I've been doing, but tonight I'm going to head back to my road trip. We left off as Tasha and I were leaving Seattle. So let's return to the I-5 and our totally unplanned jaunt down the west coast.

The International Rose Test Garden in Portland is really cool. They have TONS of roses (duh) with really interesting names. Unfortunately, I didn't write any of them down, but I did spend about hour taking pictures. The shots below were my favs:



This is Powell's City of Books in Portland. THE absolute coolest bookstore ever. It is basically a 4-story, city-block-sized warehouse chock full of books, on every topic imaginable, including bargains and new books. I could have spent days in there, but I restricted myself to only an hour, because that's how long our free parking was good. But the mere existence of this bookstore really made me consider moving Portland into the number one spot on my "Cities I Want To Move To List."

 

 This is Salt Creek Falls, a random waterfall (which happens to be the second highest in Oregon) that we came across in the Willamette National Forest on the way to Crater Lake. It was pretty cool to be at a point overlooking the top of the falls.

Now we come to Crater Lake, which was my absolutely-must-visit national park. And it did NOT disappoint. The water was so blue and clear and it was so uncrowded and peaceful, even on a gorgeous summer day. We only spent a few hours hear, but one day I plan to come back and spend a few days. So amazing!

 They call this little rock formation the Phantom Ship, because it looks like a ship, I guess, although I didn't really get that. But the towering trees at this edge of the lake lent such a majestic note to the view.

 The one thing I was most excited about at Crater Lake was a wildflower meadow trail. Well, we obviously missed the peak wildflower bloom, because this is all we saw. But we didn't miss the mosquitoes! Still charming though.

 Up next, we become crazy California girls!