Day 12 - Redwoods and Crescent City

Early morning fog!
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Today we travelled up the coast through the redwood forests. We awoke this morning in Fort Bragg to the cold and cloud. It was so much colder than we were used to. We donned jeans and jumpers before setting off up the coast. For the first few miles all we saw was fog. However, as soon as we were a mile inland in the forest all the fog disappeared and the sun came out. The fog just covered a mile strip just on the coast which was really strange. We stripped off some of the many layers we had put on so we could catch some sun, as we have recovered since our sunburn a couple of days ago. We drove through forest for ages before hitting the Avenue of the Giants and our first big redwoods. They were amazing! They grow to over 300 feet high and some of them are over 2,000 years old. Pretty cool. Our soundtrack to driving through the forests was Phil Collins’ Greatest Hits which I feel was a good accompaniment to 2,000 year old trees! It is impossible to take photos that justify how amazing the forest was. There weren’t just a couple of really large trees they went on for miles and miles. We stopped for a break in Eureka where we were originally going to stay this evening but we decided because the weather was so rubbish that we would drive further up the coast. Eureka was really pretty and we would have liked to have stayed there in the end as it had lots of old Victorian buildings – look they didn’t knock something down! However, Charlie was less than impressed by a couple of ladies who appeared to have hit the ugly tree at some point in their lives who insisted on laughing whenever she said anything to the barman where we stopped for a drink. Apparently she has a funny accent. After leaving Eureka we travelled to a couple of beaches. One in Trinidad (cool name huh?) had loads of pelicans feeding just out to sea. It was a really pretty beach which was almost deserted, primarily because there were loads of steps down to it, which most people could not be bothered to walk up again. I was not loving the climb back up I have to say – am turning into an American all ready!! Must get back to the gym! We then travelled to the Redwood National Park and hit a really big traffic jam as there had been an accident along the road. 2 1/2 hours later, much singing along to Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Joss Stone and Luther Vandross and we finally moved. Not before Charlotte nearly had her leg taken off by a rouge motorcyclist driving along the hard shoulder whilst she attempted to tan her foot. Consequently we did not see much of the park as the sun was beginning to set. We are going to go back tomorrow as where we are staying in Crescent City is on the edge of the park. I have had no mobile phone signal for two days now and we have no internet here either. Fun fun!

They're pretty large
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Distance travelled today – 240 miles.

Distance travelled today - 240 miles

Bearwatch – 0 real ones but saw lots of bear carvings if that counts?