March 1, 2008
Road Trip!
A couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to get out of town for a bit. Initially, I thought it would be great to drive down the coast to someplace warm(er), like Monterey or San Diego (Sandy Eggo if you’re Steve Poltz). However, I decided because of time constraints to just limit myself to Bend, Crater Lake and the National Redwood Forest. This was my first time doing a totally solo road trip since 2001, and it felt good.
While I did bring my camera, my first priority was to just experience the trip without too much emphasis on capturing everything on pixels. Thus, there are less photos per day on this trip…but there are still some good ones I think.
The photos in this first post are not going to be in any particular order.
Here is sunset on the third day of my trip, as seen from the Redwood National Park scenic coastal drive, near Klamath CA:
Here’s what I did according to Google Maps:
If you click the “view larger map” link right there at the bottom left, you will see my route.
You people are totally going to think I have an obsession. Yes, I saw yet another herd of elk. The sun was on his way down, so this critter was kind enough to pose during the “golden hour”:
I stayed several days at the International Hostelling “Redwood Hostel“, which is right across the Pacific Coast Highway from the ocean. I had been meaning to do this for years, so finally got one more check mark off the list of things to do before I die! There are several fun “oh my god where did this person come from” stories from that time. But additionally, there are a lot of great hikes that are readily accessible from this place. One of those hikes was in what’s known as “Stout Grove”. I thought when I heard the name that it was referring to the girth of the trees…but no, this grove was named after a guy called Stout.
A photo of me, standing in the Stout Grove. This was taken by a German woman (whose name is escaping me at the moment) who was staying at the hostel. I kept running into her and her friend at several different hiking locations.
Big trees! Hooray!
I went on a long hike that same day during which time I didn’t take any photos at all…well, no keepers anyway. I took four of a woodpecker that didn’t turn out. Ergh. Carried the damn camera 2 hours in and 2 hours back, and turns out I coulda left it behind. But, good news is I got the idea for a new song during that hike…which was part of the idea behind getting out of town anyway.
And one more, this one of the lovely Klamath River. I took a different route down to the redwoods this time, and most of the third day’s drive was a lovely winding road along this river. I think it’s called the Klamath River Highway.
There are some good stories from this trip…those will be coming soon.
