Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Today we drove to the Redwood National Park, we went up to the Lady Bird Johnson grove, walked around the grove trail, a beautiful forest of redwoods and alders. We took the scenic drives stopping occasionally admiring the wonderful views. One stop was at the “tall tree”, it is estimated to be 1,500 years old and 380 feet tall.

We drove as far north as Klamath and on the way back we took the coastal scenic route, we stopped several time to look for birds and at the scenery. Just before the highway we spotted some elk along the road, we stayed and watched, Jim got some pictures.

This evening we went over to some friends of Mary and Ivan Lines, Steve and Charlotte Hawke’s house for dinner, nice people and a very good meal. They are both retired from BLM.

The Redwood National and State Parks (are located along the Pacific Ocean on the coast of northern California. With an area of 112,512 acres, the parks protect 45% of the remaining groves of coastal redwood trees, the tallest and one of the most massive tree species on Earth.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

This morning we drove up to the Avenue of the Giants, 25 miles of tall beautiful redwoods. The Avenue of the Giants contains 51,222 acres of redwood groves. It is the most outstanding display of these giant trees in the entire 500 miles of redwood belt along the CA coast. The Avenue of the Giants is surrounded by Humboldt Redwoods State Park which has the largest remaining stand of virgin redwoods in the world.

We left the Redwoods and went on to Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, there we saw two new life birds, the Black Turnstone and Heermann’s Gull. We drove around the south spit, I got a few picture of the Pacific Ocean and on our way back we saw some Parasailers jumping off the cliffs and swinging in the breeze. We drove on to Samoa and had dinner at the Samoa Cookhouse, where lumber camp style meals are served daily. The pictures on the walls were of early logging times.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Today was Jim’s 62nd birthday.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

This morning we went to the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary and walked around the settling ponds. We saw lots of birds and waterfowl, a new bird for me was the Winter Wren. Lots of people out today, walking, birding watching and walking their dogs. We will be leaving Arcata in the morning heading for Oregon.