In the shadows of giants.

Sunday 9 August - Day 13
Crescent City, CA to Redding, CA: 217 miles

Started out early this morning with a heavy fog rolling off of the Pacific. We headed about 5 miles south and entered the Redwood National Park. We spent all morning touring around the National Park.

About 15 miles south of Crescent City we came across "Trees of Mystery" a very touristy road side attraction. They have a huge Paul Bunyan and Blue the Ox statue in their parking lot which draws a lot of traffic. We pulled over to take pictures and decided to take their tour...we are glad that we did. The tour was a 1/2 mile hike through old growth redwoods and then a gondola ride up and back down the mountain. The gondola ride got us above the tree canopy which was really neat to see from the sky.

We didn't know this prior to the trip, but Gumby is a big fan of Paul Bunyan:

We decided to get in on the action as well:

During the walking tour, a local chain saw artist had works on display. Here is a squirrel carved from redwood:

Now to show you some pics of the trees. If you haven't been here before, it very difficult to put into words just how big these trees are. The forest has a mix of giant redwoods and giant sequoias. Both trees can reach heights of 300 feet and diameters of over 20 feet! These trees are just massive.

Here are some pics:

When we got back from our tour we found out that the Redwoods are a haunting ground for Sasquatch.

After we left the Redwoods we headed east on California Rte 299 towards Redding, CA. Once we got away from the coast, the temps really started to climb. The majority of our afternoon had us riding through the high 90s. Rte 299 took us through the north Sierra Nevadas which were really dry and we saw remnants from previous wildfires. When we pulled into Redding, the temp was right on 100 degrees.

Tomorrow we plan on getting a really early start to beat the heat. We will be heading south-east to end up in Reno, NV.