Westacular

I’ve always heard about how amazing the California Redwoods are, but I guess I wasn’t really prepared for how amazing it truly is.  Growing up in the Pacific Northwest I’ve seen plenty of trees and I’ve seen some large trees, but until you stand below these monsters and gaze up you just can’t appreciate their magnificence.

First thing we did when we got into the park area was find the Mystic Forest RV Park and get the RV settled so we could take the Jeep out and about.  Pretty close to where we were staying was the Trees of Mystery park, where they have huge statues of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe, trails through the woods to see amazing trees, plus a gondola that takes you high above it all.  Oh, and Paul Bunyon talks.

The Brotherhood Tree is one of the most impressive trees in the park, it is 19 feet in diameter and 297 feet tall.  It is incredible to look up and see that its diameter remains nearly the same.  This isn’t just a tree trunk, this is the tree trunk.

The picture to the right is of just the tree, click here to see Jessie and Sarah Michael standing in front of it.

There were lots of other amazing trees to see as well, the Elephant Tree, the Cathedral Tree, the Candleabra Tree, the Lightning Tree, and many more.

The gondola ride was fun, but it was cloudy up above the trees so  we couldn’t see anything once we got up top.  If it were a clear sunny day the view would be amazing.

After the Trees of Mystery we went and drove through the Tour Thru Tree.  And it was only $4 to drive through it!  Compared to the other tours we’ve been doing, this is a steal.

Next we went and found the Corkscrew Tree, south of our campsite.  We didn’t know what it was going to look like, though we figured twisting was involved, but it was cooler than I would have thought.  The tree is huge and it is very hard to capture in a photo what the thing is all about.  You need to see it to appreciate it.  In my opinion of course.

We keep seeing signs warning of Elk that could be on the road but to Jessie’s disappointment we also keep not seeing any Elk.  On the way out of the park Jessie finally got her Elk wish.  There were only two of them, but it was fun to see some wildlife.

The Redwoods were neat, better than I expected.  Thank you Mr. Bunyon!

This morning we left the Maple Lane RV Park and Marina to head for Crescent City, CA and the California Redwoods.  My alarm went off at 6am so we could get an early start.

We’d packed up last night so all I had to do this morning was disconnect the hoses and electric, connect the Jeep and pull away.

This went well until after hitching up the Jeep I went back to check the tail lights that they were working, and they weren’t.  ARGH!  I spend 30 minutes testing connections with my voltmeter and basically decided I was not going to be able to fix it myself.  So we hit the road.

Two hours later we arrived in Coos Bay, Oregon and found Bayshore Auto RV Repair.  These guys were really friendly, got us in right away with a mechanic who quickly got us up and running and back on the road.

Apparently something went wrong with the wires in the connector for the magnetic lights that caused them to disconnect and then short, breaking the fuse for the trailer tail lights.

I was just so pleased that they were able to get us going so fast.