Day 28 - Redwood

The Redwoods are native only to northern California because of the particular climate there. Temperate with little variation between summer and winter, and nightly fogs during the summer which keeps the area humid. Millions of years ago, woods like these could be found all over the world, but with the gradual lowering (yes, lowering - despite the climate changes in modern day, it's still cooler now than when we had dinosaurs!) of the temperature, this is the only area in which they now grow.

That doesn't mean they all grow in one spot! The national park focuses on hikers, and not drivers, so some the really good spots (including the world's biggest tree) can only be reached by hiking quite far on foot. We opted for one of the shorter routes, a walk just under one hour where we saw some great scenery and of course, huge trees:



To give a little perspective, here's a shot of Mattias next to the biggest tree we saw today, and one of the biggest in the forest. It wasn't actually dramatically bigger than some of the others we saw!


This tree is about 100 meters high, 7 meters in diameter at the base, and 1500 years old!

We saw some elks, but having seen enough moose, deer and reindeer in Sweden, we weren't too impressed. They seemed mostly domesticated as well and grazed without a care right next to people taking pictures. No, I much prefer this little squirrel:


After leaving the national forest, we set off east and slowly homebound! In this rather remote part of the state, there were no big roads going east, so we took yet another mountainous route. And what mountains! Steep climbs and hillsides covered with lush fir trees as far as the eye could see. There was little to no traffic and we took our time as the road wound through the mountains. We went alongside the Trinity river for a long time, along the bottom of a great valley. It made us think of a mix of Twin Peaks, old gold rush movies and Stand By Me. Absolutely beautiful!


Pretty sunset over the last of the hills before the country flattened out again.


Tomorrow we're going into Nevada again, and then on to Utah and Salt Lake City where we hope to get a glimpse of mormons.

Sleepytime!