tall trees

To escape the blustery winds and foggy coast of Monterey, we decided to drive north to Boulder Creek to see some redwoods. We could only marvel at the majesty of Big Basin State Park's tall redwoods, craning our necks upward to catch a glimpse of the trees' tippety tops. Thousands of years old, hundreds of feet tall, tens of feet wide and around, the redwoods towered above us, pillars of red splintered wood, sheltering the trail with a ceiling of green.



Hiking up the Sequoia Trail, we encountered the Sempervirens Falls, a measly trickle in contrast to its winter and spring flow. Charred stumps and felled trees littered the edges of the trail, a reminder of the wildfires that visited this forest not very long ago.

Some of the trees opened up, inviting us to explore their cavernous interiors. Even with two of us together, we could barely manage to span the trees. And to think that we were not even seeing the widest of the redwoods, bridges tunneled through them as had been done at Mariposa...



With miles of trails, numerous waterfalls, a ocean vista, and a beach on the Pacific Coast, Big Basin offered us much more than we could possibly see in a single afternoon. Click here for more photos from our trip to Big Basin, and for photos of the sunset at Asilomar State Beach in Pacific Grove, CA.