On Walkabout On: The Northern California Coast

After visiting the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park my wife and I then proceeded to follow the four wheel drive road further into this dense redwood forest:

The trees that surrounded the road were no where near as big as the trees I had hiked around in Stout Grove, but they were still big enough to dwarf my Ford:

Looking into the dense forest it was pretty clear that most of the trees in this forest that surrounded the road had been logged before and that these trees were probably all under 50 years old:

Eventually the road exited the dense forest and my wife and I pulled into the small town of Crescent City.

There is not much to the town, but it was a nice enough location where a whole lot of people were having fun flying kites out on the beach:

My wife and I had dinner at a local diner which was pretty good before finding a hotel to stay at.  The next day we planned on driving along the northern California coast line to the Trees of Mystery, which our waitress at the diner highly recommended to us:

So after eating breakfast we began driving south on Highway 101 and in the early morning sunshine we could see the famous fog of northern California, which provides the moisture necessary for the large redwood trees to grow:

Eventually Highway 101 rises from the beach and into the hills that steeply plunge into the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean:

This coastline actually reminded me a bit of the Great Ocean Road in Australia’s southeast, but not quite as dramatic.  From a look out on the first hill, a great view of Crescent City was available:

What I found more interesting is an information marker that said that Crescent City lies in an identified tsunami zone due to frequent earthquakes that occur off shore:

I have never experienced a tsunami before and I have no plans of living in Crescent City to find out.  Here is a picture of my Ford from the look out safely above any possible tsunami:

Anyway we continued south down the highway and a fractured coastline began to come into view:

Something else that was also noticeable is that the trees along the coastline are relatively small compared to the trees in the interior which is probably because of the salt spray that the trees have to deal with every day.  The weakness of these trees is quite evident by how many trees we saw that were cut in half by the wind:

Fortunately on this day there was little wind and just mostly beautiful blue skies:

The highway began to drop in elevation and approach the sea shore again:

My wife and I parked at the beach which wasn’t much of beach and rather just a bunch of rocks:

The waves coming in were quite high this day, which probably means that a storm is coming somewhere out in the ocean:

We eventually came upon another beach had some sand with a few people out lounging about in:

People weren’t the only things lounging out in the sun as this seagull was enjoying the sunshine as well:

My wife and I then stopped to get something to eat at the Yurok Indian Reservation and this town had the nicest homes I have seen on any Indian reservation I have been on:

Quite a nice place with quite an ideal setting along the Klamath River.  The town was also right next to the Trees of Mystery park which we planned on visiting next.