On to Big Trees… The Redwoods

Heading out of Crater Lake and on to California and the Redwoods. Along the way, Tara and I stopped in Grant’s Pass, OR. The only reason that I knew that Grant’s Pass existed, is that it’s one of two locations for Off The Map Tattoo. I got my “Birdnard” (as Tara calls it) tattoo at their shop in Easthampton, MA, and thought it would be cool to stop and get a tattoo at their other location… The more I thought about it, the more I realized we’d be heading to Redwoods, Yosemite, Big Sur… woods and beaches… probably the last two places you want to be with a fresh tattoo… other than prison that is. So Tara and I have passed on the tattoos… for now. Ok, back on track… Grant’s Pass. The first thing we noticed about Grant’s Pass was that they have bear statues on just about every corner and in front of certain stores… not wild bears, but bears dressed as a dancing couple from the fifty’s, one large bear dressed as a barber (outside the barber shop obviously)… and things like that… they were everywhere but they were actually really nice… not like the bizarre cows that Boston put everywhere a couple years ago. So, getting past the bears, Tara and I stopped at a place called The Bohemian? Maybe… I know it had Bohemian in it. Cool place, we sat outside (Murphy was like… I’m not going in there…) But it was a great stop for lunch and we headed back to the car. On our way, I spied a music store and told Tara we had to stop.

In the past Tara has mentioned that she wants to learn to play a musical instrument and she’s had a lot of difficulty with my guitar. She has smaller hands, and it makes it hard for her to move her fingers around and get the cords… so I thought it would be good for her to learn how to play the ukulele. So… I talked her into buying one. She also got a chord sheet and a song book so we’ll see how this goes. I’m betting she’s playing songs in a week or so.

So we’re plus one ukulele and we’re heading out of town, onward to the Redwoods.

We arrived at Jedediah Smith campground in the Redwoods State and National Park. The campground is pretty incredible with massive Redwoods throughout the camping areas, and our site was right by the Smith River that runs throughout the forest. Our first night was pretty laid back, we had a fire and just relaxed. The next morning Tara and I woke up to hike Mill Creek trail. When it comes to Sequias/Redwoods, the National Park Service and whoever else does the measuring, no longer list or identify the largest trees in the world. This is in an effort to keep the trees and the forest safe from everyone and their brother trampling through to see them. So, the tallest tree in the world is located in Redwood forest… somewhere. We were speaking to a woman working at the Visitor Center about hikes and we briefly mentioned the “hidden giants”, she gave us a look (you know the “you didn’t hear it from me” look) and said, “You want to do the Mill Creek trail”, so that’s what we did. It was incredible. Much like the Hoh Rainforest, everything felt like we were on the set of a Jurassic Park movie. There is no way to capture the size of the trees with a camera. Side note, at the end of this hike, which ended in the Stout Grove, our camera officially shit the bed. No more pictures with this thing until we get a new lense.

The next morning we had to leave the campground for a while because our site was reserved for this night, but we were hoping something would open up. We made the best of the day, and drove over to Society Hole which was an oddly named swimming area by the creek. We spent a few hours here just hanging out by the water, lounging in the sun, and Tara worked diligently on getting blog posts ready to be uploaded since there was a hint of service. She also got the camera to work long enough to take these two pictures… but this is it.