Trips

January:  The Redwoods


From the Salem, Oregon area it takes only about 5 hours on I-5 and The Redwood Highway 199 to reach Crescent City, California.  We left around 7:00 a.m. and arrived in time for lunch.  The traveling was easy, even though it was the first weekend in January, and gave us many ideas for future trips including these:

Winston Wildlife Safari http://www.wildlifesafari.net/ 
Cave Junction National Monument http://www.cavejunction.com/cavejunction/bolan.shtml
Science Works Museum http://www.scienceworksmuseum.org/index.asp
Ashland, Oregon http://www.ashlandchamber.com/Splash.asp

But our goal was to see the big trees; the tallest trees in the world.  Sometimes we think that kids are only excited by the latest video game or gadget, but it just isn't true.  Bug and Bean were thrilled at the prospect of seeing these magnificent giants and chose them over all the other options mentioned.  At the end of the post I will list some of the things we did to learn about and grow in appreciation for the trees before seeing them, which seemed to help raise the anticipation level. 

We stopped in at National Park headquarters at 1111 Second Street in Crescent City to get advice on where to go and the gentleman there was happy to help.  He gave us solid advice on what might work for us considering time constrains and age of the smallest hiker.  He also gave us back-up plans and extensions, not attempting to under- or overestimate our abilities.  He even gave us a hint that the tallest tree was somewhere along the trails in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, but that it is unmarked and therefore hard to distinguish from the other massive trunks around it.  That did nothing to squash our anticipation for seeing it, and we believe we did see it.  We just don't know which of our favorites it was. 

Here are some of the things to be seen in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park:

We started a fun game where we would walk around the base of the tree, if there was a path, and count how man steps it took to get around the entire base.  Then we took a picture showing the number for each child.  Here is one that took Bug 50 good size steps to get around.  He can then measure his stride and estimate the circumference.  We also took the opportunity to talk about radius and diameter, always keeping it educational!

This one took Bean fifty-one steps to get around.  Soon they wanted to pace off every tree in the forest, looking for bigger and bigger trees.

 There is really no way to capture the grandeur of these trees in a photograph.  They make average trees look like saplings.

 This tree is an example of making the experience personal.  For Bug the tree is 35 paces around.  For Bean, 41.  They smiled like this the entire day.

 Even with all the fun we had in the Redwood Forests, the adventure was only one day down.  We still had more to come!  It felt like we had already enjoyed a vacation, and we had a night and a day left.  And we made every minute count!