Blog Post

Redwood National & State Parks, CA

  • By Sarah
  • •
  • 28 May, 2019
  • •

Trees, trees, and more trees...

By the time we made it to the Redwoods, we had already been on a whirlwind tour visiting Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, and a number of national forest and state parks. Between the long drives, lack of sleep, and altogether crankiness of the four of us, we were less than excited about seeing more trees.

Upon entering the Redwoods, our dialogue went like this...
"There is a large tree."
"And another one."
"We need a change of scenery."

Given the parks easy access and the fact that we were literally driving right through it (the park is located off of the 101) we decided we had to stop and do some camping and exploring.

Since, we had abandoned our motor home for our trip down to California we were in a tent for the night. We had a ton of success tent camping at other California state campgrounds. Little did we know the weather at the Redwoods would dip into the low 40's. This doesn't sound too bad, until you consider our sleeping bags are rated for 50 degrees and above. We were all pretty cold, so cold I couldn't even go to sleep. After staying up all night, we packed up the tent at 5:30 AM.

We were all pretty happy to be in the car with the heater on. And by now, we missed the comforts of our motor home, which was in storage in Lincoln City, OR.

On our way back to Lincoln City, we stopped at some amazing rest stops in Oregon:


Oregon has the best rest stops.

And decided we were not going to do any more tent camping the following nights.


"Please don't make me stay in a tent, again."

The Redwood National Park is a spectacular park, and we do have plans to go back there in the following years. Only next time, we will be going in warmer weather and plan on staying in our Trek.


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Crater Lake National Park

By Aaron • 02 Jun, 2019
In the list of top 10 deepest lakes in the world, Crater Lake is pretty cool for several reasons. In addition to this lake being in a volcanic caldera (a crater-like hole that forms after a volcanic eruptions leave the ground deep underneath unstable and unsupported).

It's also a lake with no connected sources (streams, etc). So that makes it crystal clear. Interestingly, there's actually a way to measure the clarity of a body of water: the Secchi disk:

Redwood National & State Parks, CA

By Sarah • 28 May, 2019

By the time we made it to the Redwoods, we had already been on a whirlwind tour visiting Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, and a number of national forest and state parks. Between the long drives, lack of sleep, and altogether crankiness of the four of us, we were less than excited about seeing more trees.

Yosemite National Park

By Aaron • 28 May, 2019
On the drive through the hills on the way into Yosemite Valley, you can see some of the recent wildfire devastation. There were a few places that had been setup with what looked like makeshift lumber mills, each having large stacks of charbroiled logs piled high. They maintained sprinklers on them to keep them wet, for some reason. I couldn't find that I took any pictures of these burnt log mills. Not sure if they can still salvage some of the wood deep inside the logs, if they grind them up for sawdust, or just stack the logs out of the burned zones to remove any future wildfire fuel.

Sequoia National Park

By Sarah • 16 May, 2019

Sequoia National Park and Kings Canyon Park are lesser known parks compared to their northern neighbor, Yosemite. Although they lack the grandeur of Yosemite's rock formations and waterfalls, Sequoia National Park is still pretty magnificent in its own right.

The park is set up on a half loop, encompassing over 400,00 acres with an elevation climb from 1700 feet to the higher elevation points of around 7000 to 8000 feet with varying biospheres by elevation. From start to finish, it was by far the most diverse park we have been to, yet.

Death Valley National Park

By Aaron • 13 May, 2019
Death Valley has plenty of living things. Campgrounds, resorts, swimming pools, restaurants, and more tourist amenities can make it quite the opposite kind of experience that its name would suggest.

But the landscapes are probably the main attraction in this place. It feels like the closest thing you can get to standing on a desolate Martian landscape. Many of the photos you could take here, resemble those sent back from the Curiosity rover.

Not being huge fans of hot weather, we decided to do the whole trip in one long day. Which probably was a mistake, because there were so many things to see that we hurried from place to place, spending much of the time driving between viewpoints, hiking trails, or other destinations. I could easily spend another couple days seeing things that we passed by, and hiking some of the longer trails. It's a big place. The entire park comprises nearly 3.4 million acres. It's more than 4 hours just to drive from one end to the other, which you'd never actually do. You loop around the park, meandering in and out of different areas.

Here are the highlights:

Trek Tales is official

By Sarah • 20 Apr, 2019
Four months late, but Trek Tales is officially up.  We named it after our RV, a 1997 Safari Trek (class A motorhome).

We won't be able to write about each and every day's event, but will cover the highlights and points of interest. We're hoping to get at least one post up a week.

Also,  you can view our map to see where we are currently at.

We hope you enjoy the Trek Tales!

Big Bear Solar Observatory

By Sarah • 13 Apr, 2019
Big Bear Solar Observatory Tour
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