Tall, Tall Trees

Another morning, another beautiful campsite. 

It was a long drive to the Redwoods from Crater Lake, and we were glad to see some familiar faces on our way!

In case you can't tell, that's Paul Bunyan and Babe, his big blue ox! 

Stephen was too embarrassed to take this picture, but not to worry. I wasn't.

The trees in the Redwoods are just so ridiculously tall! 

And so ridiculously wide.

We climbed into a tree that we could have brought our dining room table into. It was huge! This was the view looking up.

When a tree falls in the Redwood National Forest, even if someone is around to hear it, there's not much else they can do about it. Eventually, someone will come by and cut a path through it, and then they'll leave the tree carcass there.

I climbed this tree (these trees?) like a rock wall. It was so fun! 

I felt so enchanted by this quiet place, where everything was so disproportionately gigantic and people were so small. It felt like we had driven through a magic shrink-ray, and now we walked around in an ant world, a fraction of our normal size. 

So as I always do when I feel enchanted, I invented a lot of cheesy poses for Stephen to do with me. #sorrynotsorry

I think the trail we explored was about 3 miles, but I didn't even notice it. We just walked around in awe, taking a million pictures, climbing, touching, talking. Whenever we wanted to take a kissy picture, we would wait until everyone else moved on, then quickly set up our tripod and put it on self-timer. We sometimes like it when people offer to take pictures for us, but we sometimes hate it. Anyone else?

We also went to Fern Canyon, where some parts of Jurassic World were filmed. When we were about a mile and a half from the trailhead, we encountered a giant lake in the middle of the road! We pulled over and just walked to the trailhead. And then we were actually kind of glad that we did, because we came face-to-face with some huge elk.

NatGeo status.

Looking at us with a side-eye.... 

I was so afraid the guy with the horns was going to charge at us! Stephen was not afraid of this and kept getting closer to take the picture. Then he thought it was funny to say stuff like, "You just keep walking and I'll catch up. I might be running. He might be running after me." But he didn't, and we made it to Fern Canyon in one piece.

Fern Canyon was so fun! There were footbridges everywhere, because the whole trail was pretty wet. The footbridges weren't really secured down, so when you walked on them, they bounced and moved out of place. 

"Fern Canyon" was a perfect name for this place. I've never seen so much vegetation growing all over the walls in any canyon I've ever been in!

The road to Fern Canyon isn't paved, so there was dust EVERYWHERE. You can see a huge difference in the ferns in this picture and the ferns in the one above it. 

So far, we liked the Redwoods the best of our whole trip. One day we'll go back and camp there. Anyone who wants to plan a trip and invite us is free to do so :)