The Redwoods

We left Oregon pretty quick the next morning, because we really wanted to get to the Redwoods and check out the awesome trees.  Our first camping spot was in Jedediah Smith State Park, which houses a large chunk of the Redwoods.  Their jewel of their park is called Stout Grove, because it has some of the biggest Redwoods around apparently.

The good news for us is that the road to the trailhead was closed, which made it about a 1/2 mile walk to get to the trailhead from the nearest parking.  This of course completely turned off most of the other travelers in the park, so we pretty much had the grove to ourselves, free to wander and enjoy it in peace. 

There was a lot of gazing up on this hike

Why yes, we are both wearing flannel!

We went back to camp and walked around there for a little bit, enjoying another wonderful campsite.  We had some dinner and went to sleep.  Unfortunately the ground was kind of wet, so it got our tent and sleeping bags a bit wet too, but it was well worth it!

A roadside attraction of Paul Bunyan got us to stop!

The next day we drove down the coast a bit to find our next hiking trail, called the Coastal Trail, we hooked up with it at Yurok Loop, and we wanted to hike down to the mouth of the Klamath River.  The first few miles were exceptional, with great views and beautiful trees and ferns to walk through.  We heard some seals barking down the hill from us, but couldn't see them.  The barks sounded so much like dogs we thought we were coming up to a trailhead with lots of people!  Unfortunately for us, the trail started to open up a bit and once it got exposed to the Sun, the snakes decided to sun themselves on the trail with us.  We probably saw 15-20 gardener snakes of all sizes.  The problem was we didn't know that they were gardeners at the time, so we were worried that they might be poisonous.  This led us to clapping and singing to try to warn them so they got out of our way, which was actually kind of effective.  We did pass by a beach along the way and then we made it all the way to the Klamath River.

The mouth of the Klamath River

Our plan was to hike back the way that we came, however with the all the snakes, we decided to hitch a ride.  Julie asked one couple for a ride, and they were happy to take up back up the road.  They turned out to be fellow Coloradans taking a trip very similar to ours.  Thanks for the ride guys!!!