California Raw, Day 10

The Pacific Ocean loves you. She wants to aloofly carry you away to her cold and lonely home, cradling you in her foggy arms forever.

Here at the Redwoods National Park, we finally got down to the water. It wasn’t what I expected.

The shore here is made up of crushed rocks, black sand closer to the road and small black pebbles closer to the water. There are small, beautiful pieces of wood that have been polished smooth by the strength of the tides. And walking down to the water was difficult because your feet sink quite far into the pebbles.

I originally intended to use my wind angle lens to get a broad picture of the shoreline, but as I came down the little hill I saw outcropping of rocks with green and red vegetation growing on the side, some kind of moss. The wide angle was definitely the wrong lens, but I didn’t want to take the time to go back to the car and figured I could just get up quite close for an interesting picture.

My tripod has been in the ocean current before. It’s even been in the river walk in Zion, which it fairly strong. But when I staked my little claim next to the rocks/cliff the Pacific Ocean yawned sleepily what I’m sure sounded like “Photographer, camera, appetizers, mmmmm.” Or maybe it was “whoooooosh”. Or maybe it was just the sound of the waves against the shoreline. But the pull of the ocean was surprisingly strong and my tripod was certainly not equal to the task.

I still got some pictures, but the strength of the tide was more interesting. When I got back to the car I noticed a sign warning about sneaker waves that I hadn’t seen initially. “We’re not in Kansas anymore!”

Mom and I had a full day of non-stop sightseeing. We got up early (dew drops on flowers!) and drove from Ft. Bragg to Crescent City, and the whole drive was beautiful. There are a couple of scenic drives that wind with US 101 going north, like the “Avenue of the Giants”. Further north we found a scenic drive that broke off from the scenic drive that we were already on. “A scenic drive within a scenic drive? Sure!” Soon we were off on costal drive, which was, in places, a steep gravel path. We were the only people out there (we later saw two other cars) and the view was amazing.

Tomorrow we’re going to head back to catch the things that we missed and then we’re headed up to Crater Lake, which is still mostly closed due to snow. But it will still be a wonderful stop.

There are always so many stories I want to tell -- for example, my impressions of the fine city of Garberville, CA -- but by the time I have a shower and get my pictures uploaded I'm exhausted. But speaking of pictures:

Twenty-two new pictures.