The Birds and the Trees

Sunday 29th April 2012

We started the day off with a 30 mile drive down a narrow road called The Avenue of the Giants, which is a road through the Redwood forest. The forest was quite different to the Sequoia groves we visited last week. The Redwood forests are much greener, with a very green, and quite damp forest floor. There are loads of ferns and mosses on the ground. It feels like you could easily get lost. The Sequoia groves are much drier with lots of pine needles on the forest floor and don't seem so dense.
The last things I am going to say about the big trees are some strange facts. The Sequoia depend on fire to survive, whereas the Redwood are threatened by it. And both have tiny cones for such big trees. The Redwood cone is only as big as an olive!

We went for a short walk in the forest, and stopped for lunch a bit later by the World Famous Drive Thru Tree (you can't tell from the photo, but the tree is still alive and growing!)

Finally, we arrived on the coast and got our first glimpse of the sea for what seemed like ages. The skies were clear and it was sunny, but it wasn't particularly warm, and it was very hazy. We had the roof down but had to put our coats on.

The coast is steep cliffs with beaches with dangerous waves. We stopped off later in the day at a beach, which was nothing special in itself, but had a small lake just inland, full of birds doing all sorts of entertaining things.
Claire spent ages taking photos of a rather boring brown bird having a very energetic wash in the water. Meanwhile, an Osprey was circling overhead, but didn't swoop on any of the other birds. There were lots of cute ducklings and goslings, and Claire is very proud of this duckling photo taken with her big zoom lens:

 

We went on a trail round the lake, which was a bit nerve racking as we were expecting the boardwalk below our feet to give way at any time. There were broken planks in it all over the place. We made it round safety, although came to the conclusion that we could see more birds from the car park. On the trail, we could hear them but not see them for all the trees.

We weren't sure where to stay tonight. The first town we tried was completely out of our price range. So we went back on ourselves to a town called Fort Bragg. We'd driven through it on the way and decided it would be OK as a backup option. The first place we tried was called Super 8. This is a chain of motels, the American equivalent of Premier Inn or Travelodge. We've stayed mainly in independent motels before, but thought we'd give it a go.
We had a look at two rooms. The first had a pack of rowdy wolf whistling men on a balcony outside, and the second appeared to be still occupied by another guest! We gave it up as a bad job, and found somewhere much nicer, with a view of seals frolicking in the harbour from our balcony for not much more money. And the breakfast sounds pretty good too.

Tomorrow is our last full day on the road. We may not have to buy any more gas! Hopefully tomorrow will bring more interesting birds, possibly whales, and maybe a forest of dwarf trees. And you thought you'd heard the last of trees.

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Location:Pacific Coast, CA