Redwoods in Northern California

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Paul Bunyon was exceedingly popular in folklore in the US. We first saw Paul, as you may recall, in Bemidji, MN. And heard of him again in Idaho. And now that he has reached the West Coast with all of the Redwood trees, he is about 4 times as tall as we first viewed him in MN. Guessin' he had to grow a bit to deal with all of the Redwood trees.



This first tree is called the family tree. It might be difficult to see...but in the upper left...and the mid right there is a new tree growing out from the parent tree. We saw many trees that were growing out of a fallen parent...which had just enough root structure alive to support the new tree.
And how high do they grow...200-300 feet or more. Seems as though you cannot see the top.

The trees are exceedingly Huge...and sometimes several trees grown right next to each other out of the same root structure...seems like a wall.

Jean is only standing about 10 feet in front of this tree. Incredible size.
We took a gondola ride to the top of the mountain. Didn't see many BIG trees on the way up...some of the trees that were saved on the bottom of the mountain date back 3000 years - but this area was logged in 1950...and many of the redwoods at this higher altitude had ONLY a diameter of 25-30 inches. (Still big.)

Our gondola.

And the view of the ocean from the top. :-)

And so you ask...How big is big? Two arm spans didn't really cover the diameter, did it??

As we drove through the northern redwood forests...you get a better view of the size of the trees. The "smaller" one immediately to the right of the car is probably only 7-800 years old.

The roads through the forest were "interesting." It just wove around through the trees...little corners here and there to get around the big ones.
Some roads were JUST wide enough for one car.


We're guessing that the diameter of this tree is somewhere between 15-18 feet.

And we had the opportunity to drive through a tree. Didn't have any problem with our little car...but we followed a minivan...which didn't have a problem, either.