Redwood Coast Trip Days 3-4

Day 1 And 2: The Drive in.
Day 2b: Hikes to Watson Falls and Toketee Falls

Day 3 – Tuesday: Just relax and enjoy the room and the coast day.

After the long drive, we really wanted to do a whole lot of nothing today.

 

Woke up and enjoyed the view from our room. Absolutely spectacular.

 

 

 

 

We were enjoying watching the hummingbirds flit about in the garden on the side of the house.

View with some flowers.

View from our deck.

 

We did go down to the nearby beach. My parents couldn’t make it down here, so we found nearby Ophir Beach.

 

Fun clouds.

Roxy doesn’t like water, but we thought we would see how she does with the ocean.

Uh oh.

Yup, she doesn’t like it.I thought she was going to poo for a minute there, but she was just arching her back from the cold water.

We got a nice shot of us enjoying the beach. Thanks mom!

 

Some nice waves.

Giant aloe looking plant out front. Holy crap that thing is huge!

 

View of the main area in our house. Very nicely decorated. I was very pleased with our accommodations.

 

 

A nice fuchsia plant on the property.

Kind of had a sunset. But as is typical for the Oregon coast, the wall of fog got in the way.

 

Had another enjoyable evening with the Milky Way.

 

And the Big Dipper.

Back to the Milky Way.

Different angle. I am really enjoying that we can see the Milky Way from here.

Day 4 – Wednesday: Into the Redwoods!

Today we decided to head on south and do the Trees Of Mystery area. We know it is going to be a tourists trap, but we really wanted to ride the gondola up through the trees.

I started the morning with my coffee and a smoke and watched 2 birds fly by with fish in their talons. This third one I tried to hurry and get a shot, but it was further away, this is the best I got. :( You can kind of make it out.

Roxy getting some sun.

Crow.

The bridge on the way to Gold Beach.(DBP Album)

Crescent City is very foggy! (DBP Album)

Just out of Crescent City.(DBP Album)

Driving through Del Norte Coast Redwoods. This park doesn’t appear to have any roads other than 101, and not many trails. There may be more to it than seems, but it may also just be a preserve. (DBP Album).

Foggy stretch of road. (DBP Album)

We arrived at Trees Of Mystery! Yep, definitely a tourist trap. Still some neat things to do. Click the link above to see more of our adventure here.

After adventuring through here, we had lunch at the Forest Cafe across the street. I knew we probably shouldn’t have eaten here, tourist trap and all, but we were all really hungry and ready for lunch. The food was meh. not terrible, but not great, but for a deserted cafe (seriously us and 1 other table) the service was terrible.

Anyway, while in the park Landis noticed a sign for Tour Thru Tree. I have always wanted to do one of those, it wasn’t very far south of here so what the heck!

Unfortunately, we lost my parents. So we pulled over hoping to see if they saw the signs we did and caught up. Meanwhile we enjoyed the emus. After a few minutes it became apparent they hadn’t. So I pulled out my phone to call them, and had no service. Crap.

Well, we’re here.

It was 5 bucks a car load. I asked if there was anything else of interest and she said she has an outhouse in a stump that is neat. Well. Alrighty then. We decided it was worth the 5 bucks to do the standard touristy thing and drive through a trunk.

Short little drive up. (DBP Album)

Before long we arrived. In another display of Redwoods fortitude, even with a tunnel bored though, this tree is alive and kicking.

See, greenery.

We got a couple touristy shots (with the help of a nice family, whom we returned the favor) and made our way down the road.

On the way out we found the outhouse stump.

 

Fully functioning.

Whoops. Hahaha this was kind of fun too.

After here we looked at the map and Elk Meadow wasn’t too far so we decided to push down to that. Just a little more south down the 101.

Crossed over this bridge over the Klamath River. It has two golden bear statues standing guard on either end. (DBP)

Before long we hit Elk Meadow. And yes, there are elk here. I guess they are here common enough that the name is fitting.

These were taken with my telephoto lens. You don’t want to get too close to elk, or any other wild animal for that matter.

The road the Elk Meadow is on goes down to Golds Bluff Beach. I camped there many, many years ago and had the wonderful experience of seeing the elk come out of the forest, down the cliff and then hang out next to the ocean. I was hoping to do that again this year, as well as nearby Fern Canyon, but someone that had just come from there said the road was in pretty bad shape and was a really bumpy ride.

We decided to push a little further south and go to Ladybird Johnson Grove instead.

Ladybird Johnson Grove was an amazing adventure and I am glad we went to check it out. You can see more of that here.

On our way back to the room. (DBP)

 

The Klamath River. (DBP)

Very windy roads through here.

The sun was starting to set as we reached Crescent City. (DBP)

I love driving through the thick forests.

I like that I am ending every night with a shot of the Milky Way. I tweaked with the brightness on this one to get it to stand out a little more.

And one over the ocean. Had to stay up a little later to accomplish that.

Well that was another great day of exploring. We have a few more days of adventures so come back soon.