We
headed further south and a little inland to Humboldt Redwoods
State Park. This park has
the largest remaining old-growth redwood forest in the world. It gets 80 inches
of rain from October to May, which is great for the trees. Lucky for us we only
got a few drops of rain while we were there.
We
drove the 30-mile Avenue of the Giants – another road through towering trees –
and we camped again amongst the redwoods.
No
electricity at these California
state park campgrounds, but that is okay as our trailer has propane heat and
solar panels.
We
went on a number of small hikes. The first was the Founders Grove Trail. Lots
of tall trees here.
We
saw quite a few burned out trunks, but the trees still seemed to be alive.
Who’s photographing whom?
The
Dyerville Giant was one of the Champion redwood trees at about 370 feet tall
(200 feet taller than Niagara Falls!),
but fell in 1991. It’s hard to even spot Bill at the other end of this fallen
giant.
Here’s
the root ball of another fallen tree. These woods had quite a few fallen trees.
We
went on a few other short hikes. One went to the Giant Tree; another went to
Tall Tree. They all seem Big, Giant and Tall to us.
Humboldt Redwoods State Park
is the home of the 4th tallest known tree (which we didn’t see) and was the
tallest from 2000-2006 until the discovery of taller trees in Redwood National Park.
Barbara read an interesting article on the tallest trees about a decade or so
ago. They now prefer not to make the tallest trees tourist attractions, which
we think is a good idea.
We
loved our walks amidst the big trees.
