Redwood National Park

Of all the times we’ve come to Northern California, and stayed in Weott and Redcrest (which are in the heart of redwood country), this is the first time we actually made the trip further north to visit the Redwood National Park. We opted to visit the portion of the park that’s in the town of Orick, about 80-miles north of where we were staying, and home to one of three Visitors Centers in the park. We picked up a map and a couple of brochures and covered as much ground as possible over about five hours.

Stepping into the forest is like stepping back in time with old-growth trees that are centuries old, some even over 1000 years old. 133,000 acres of state and national parks comprised of temperate rain forests along the coast of Northern California all reside within Del Norte and Humboldt Counties. These parks protect 45% of all the remaining coast redwood old-growth forests, home to the tallest and one of the most massive tree species on Earth.

It is hard to fathom that nearly 90% of the original old-growth forest was destroyed after many decades of unrestricted clear-cut logging (in 1850 redwood forest covered more than 2,000,000 acres of the California coast). I can’t understand how anyone could be in the presence of such majesty and have any desire other than to preserve and protect. Thanks to the serious efforts towards conservation began in the 1920’s by the Save-The-Redwoods League, and the eventual establishment of the National Park in 1968, we are able to bear witness to these gentle giants in what’s left of their natural environment. Here are some pictures from our much too short visit.

Bryce Canyon National Park

The culmination of our two week tour of northern Arizona and southern Utah was our day trip to Bryce Canyon National Park. Once again, this proved to be a place of indescribable geological formations, a vast rolling landscape of red, pink, yellow and white hoodoos. The surroundings are otherworldly, at times ghostly and ethereal, and walking among these ancient towers was like being transported to some other planet. We hiked through several trails in the park, and at every turn in the road was a new shape, a new color, and a new impression, with our eyes constantly drawn skyward to the spires and pinnacles at the top of each hoodoo. At the bottom of the canyons, as I wound my way around the rock formations I felt tiny and insignificant, almost like an intruder into some secret world. Along the ridges, gazing down into the canyons below, the hoodoos were transformed into rippling waves of an ocean of rock, with arrangements that looked like gigantic aquarium ornaments.

“Poetry in Stone” is how the National Park brochure describes Bryce Canyon, and I can’t think of a more apt definition. Millions of years of weathering and erosion shape the rocks, with flowing water playing only a minor role in this story. As snow and ice melt, water seeps into fractures. As it re-freezes, it expands and cracks the rock around it. The combination of gravity and meltwater causes soil creep, moving the stone fragments downhill. There, is of course, always a geological explanation for all planetary structures and phenomenon, and hoodoos are curious and captivating, begging the questions of “how?”, “why?” and “when”?  But the immediate experience of seeing the crystalline blue sky, rocks ablaze with sunlight, shifting shadows wrapping in and out of the hoodoos as the day progresses, and the forces of nature creating this dynamic, mesmerizing place cannot be confined to merely geological terms. Hopefully our pictures help fill in some of the blanks as well.