Thursday, April 30, 2015--Crescent City to Arcata, CA--Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

As we left Crescent City this morning the temperature was a calm 53 degrees.

We left at 8:20 and drove S on Hwy 101 for about a mile. The beach in the bottom of the photo above is where we saw the shorebirds.

 We figured they were a mixture of Dunlin and Western Sandpipers. It was fun to watch the sandpipers fly in a group from one spot to another.

Then we saw some bigger shorebirds, and soon identified them with their down-turned bills as Whimbrels. There were a couple dozen Whimbrels strung out for a mile or two.

Back on Hwy 101, before we blinked our eyes we were surrounded by big trees growing right up to the side of of the road.

Soon an overlook revealed the California coast.

We stopped at a pond at Lagoon Creek Wayside to look for birds. We saw a Band-tailed Pigeon at the top of a tall distant tree, also a Kingfisher, Wood Ducks, Barn and Cliff Swallows, and Savannah Sparrows. But we only got a photo of a female Red-winged Blackbird working over a bush beside us.

 A purple trillium

Then we were in the redwoods of Prairie Creek Redwoods National and State Park. Again, there were no services and not many signs identifying what we saw. There were quite a few trails and we walked several of them. You just can't see the redwoods without walking among them.

How many separate ecosystems lived in this one tree?

The lush ferns carpeted the entire forest, making for a stunningly breathtaking walk.

At 1 pm the temperature in the Redwoods was 78 degrees.

The redwoods have very delicate needles, giving a green lace-like canopy to the walk.

Burls are a common feature on redwoods, at ground level, or all the way to the top.

The burls then collect another ecosystem on them, sometimes including a whole separate tree as on this one.

The bark is usually gray with streaks of red

Even the fallen logs become home to another system of plants

A burl on the right side on the center trunk is the total support of the large tree growing on the right. Talk about no visible means of support!

This fern mass is growing on top of a broken limb very high in the tree. A bit of dirt collects and maybe birds drop seeds to become a separate ecosystem, sometimes weighing up to 1000 pounds! A ranger walked with us for a while and showed us this feature.

A world growing within a world! It makes you lose all perspective.

Although this tree trunk was hollowed out, possibly by fire long ago, the huge tree above was alive and well.

And just like that, here we are in sunny Arcata, CA with petunias blooming and palm trees and bright colors in the motel! The temperature near the ocean dropped to 62.

Today our eyes were on many ocean birds--it was especially exciting to find the Whimbrels. Then our eyes were on Redwoods in all their immensity, beauty and majesty. 

Wednesday, April 29, 2015--Crescent City and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

I am finally caught up to myself on the blog! Hooray!!!!!!

Today dawned a beautiful sunny day with the temperature at a cool 52 degrees. Over breakfast another traveller told us of a good bakery/deli near us so we stopped for some of their Morning Glory muffins he bragged up to take into the Redwoods for our lunch. Redwoods do not have services and even the park headquarters is still closed for winter. The other traveller said he would drive a thousand miles for those muffins! They were very delicious--we have only come 798 miles for them!

The way through Jedediah's Redwoods is a narrow gravel road (formerly a wagon road). It is one lane wide with pullouts and the road often just squeezes between two mammoth redwood trees. We discovered it is almost impossible to capture the color or size of the redwoods with our camera. I eventually decided the iPhone worked better. Even at that, the color in the photos is very faded out because the automatic setting tries to compensate for the darkness.

This group of photos were taken with the iPhone

This is the road. It is hard to imagine how a wagon road was ever built. The land is not level by any means, and you can't move the fallen trees out of the way. Quite a challenge for some early day engineers!

I tried an experiment with this photo. It is a sideways panorama photo--the blurriness a combination of the dark shade and my shaky hand. Nevertheless, at the very bottom left of the tree you can almost make out Paul. It gives an idea of the immensity of the giant redwood!

The entire wagon road was 9 miles long and it took us 6 hours, driving! We also walked a bit on two separate trails. We heard lots of birds in one spot, but the only ones we saw were Flicker, Steller's Jay and Raven. We heard Pacific Wren and kinglets. Oh how we wished for MerryLynn or Ginger to help us with all the bird songs!

Every surface was lush and green. These photos are with the Canon camera.

Trillium blossom

Steller's Jay

Tuesday, April 28, 2015--Port Orford to Crescent City, California

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

We left the little town of Port Orford at 9 am, temperature was 55 degrees and misting which quickly turned into drizzle as we headed south on the Coast Highway 101.

The drive around Humbug Mountain was dramatically green and beautiful. 

We stopped at the Humbug Mountain Wayside where we briefly saw an American Dipper beside Brush Creek, and a grove of Myrtle trees.

Weather continued to deteriorate as we drove south. At Gold Beach South Jetty several Osprey flew overhead carrying large fish; a bunch of seals were resting on their backs in the bay.

Mourning Dove

We birded along the Lower Pistol River Road and were excited to see a Say's Phoebe and a Black Phoebe sitting on a fence--one left and the other came to almost exactly the same spot. The ruffled feathers show it was quite windy.

Walking a short trail to see Arch Rock, a very excited Golden-Crowned Kinglet was showing his best to his lady love--I had never seen such a golden crown! I also saw two groups of Brown Pelicans floating along near the shore. (Sorry unable to get photos)

A group of Black Oystercatchers entertained us at Lone Ranch Beach Wayside where they wandered around the rocky shore, as we did too.

It was interesting to watch a group of Western Gulls in a pond. As each one came in for a landing it splashed around in the water taking a bath.

Our total mileage for today was 98. We are settled for 2 nights at the south end of Crescent City, California where we can see the beach and surfers from our motel window.