Those are some tall trees

Saturday, after taking in the beauty of Crater Lake, we hopped back in the car and drove to Northern California, stopping only for some fast food in Grant's Pass. We were headed to Crescent City, CA to begin at the visitor's center. To get there, we drove along the edge of the Redwoods at 55mph. They were impressive enough that you wanted to hang your head out the window to get a photo (We didn't, mom!).

When we got the the visitor's center, Super Chatty Park Ranger Guy told us everything we needed to know and more about everything we could do in a 30 mile radius, most of which we ignored. However, he had a couple good pieces of advice. The first was that there were seals and sea lions in the Crescent City Harbor (which was recently the most damaged area in the US from March's tsunami in Japan).

We drove over and, of course, since Desiree and Curtis only got to see a couple of seals in Newport, and even those were way out on a rock, they wanted to get "close". But I think the park ranger scared them when he said seals and sea lions can bite. Melissa and I had a good time laughing as they inched forward and then backed away.

We then headed to see the Redwoods. Among the 1,000 things the ranger said, he told us to take the dirt road through the forest that was built around the trees - he failed to mention the potholes! You drive about 15mph and take in lots of Redwoods. There were also 2 trail options given to us by Super Chatty Park Ranger Guy.  The first one was a mile loop. The other trail was The Boy Scout Tree Trail at the end of which was a waterfall and an old growth tree named "The Boy Scout Tree" because of a famous photo taken in front of the tree. This trail is 2.8 miles in and the same 2.8 miles out (half uphill).

We drove the dirt road, taking in a few sites and stopping for a photo op in front of this giant downed tree.

My sister and I proceeded to play chicken as we decided which trail to hike. Mind you, we had spent the morning at Crater Lake and then driven to California so by this time it is already after 3:00. I was in favor of the short trail and some quick photos - but I wasn't going to say anything. Let the game of chicken begin. She didn't want to say "I just had surgery 3 weeks ago" and I didn't want to say "I haven't tried to hike this far since I had hardware put in my spine". Since no one flinched, we set off on a 5.6 mile hike. Oh, and I forgot the best part - the ranger indicated that there was a tree down on the trail. For a normal forest, that isn't a problem because you can hop over a downed tree. You cannot "hop" over a downed Redwood. More on that later.

We started the hike.

It was a little muddy.

 Right away, we stopped for photos.

 When Curtis would run too far ahead, we would holler "Marco" and he would yell back "Polo" and stop for us to catch up. Funny - we didn't have to do that on the way back out.

Then we got to a place where the trail looked like this:

"You can't go under it and you can't go through it. You have to go over it." It was a team effort.

We made it to the waterfall.It wasn't much since we had just been hiking Silver Falls three days earlier, but it did mark the half way point. We had made it 2.8 miles. But, we had that far to go (and we still hadn't found the Boy Scout Tree). 

Melissa went and checked a side trail we thought to be THE tree. It was!.... so we hiked straight up hill and finally saw it: The Boy Scout Tree

   Pardon the dumb look on my face! We were the only ones there, so we had to prop my camera up on a log and set the timer. This is the best one we got.

The hike out (from this point it was over 2 miles) went faster. There were only a couple stops for photos - actually they were stops to rest, but Melissa started snapping. We looked like this.

We cleaned up. I took a ton of Advil. We stopped in some small town and had the best tasting Subway sub ever (maybe because I was famished) and drove back to Corvallis. We got home around midnight.

Best day ever.