Walking Among The Giants

 It was very interesting to watch the beach change shape around every curve on the coastal highway.  

The Redwoods are just unreal.  I do not have the ability to show the great mass and height with my camera skills.  Just amazing.  

Definitely Tree Ents. The wind was blowing, this is how they grow.

Backward pictures yet again. Otter Crest was the most beautiful and helpful place we've stayed and interestingly enough, the cheapest.  The gardens were simply stunning. 

It is 60 degrees here in Fortuna, California.  Tomorrow we head into a massive heat wave.  Predicted to be 109 degrees in Bakersfield where we are going.  Prayers please. 

With exception to Anacortes, most of our time is spent in the car. Just no other way to do it with such distances between highlights. We traversed almost 4000 miles in ten days. I will return home with a much greater respect for truck drivers and a great love for Dutch Brother's coffee.

Wonder of Wonders

 Wow. Today we drove to central Oregon to see what we could see of Mt. St. Helen.  So. Stinking. Unbelievably. Gorgeous.   They have three different visitor's centers that are the best ones we've seen so far.   Of course they have every detail of the blow from every imaginable angle in huge living color.  85,000 homes were built from the trees that fell in the hurricane-like wind. You easily see on the mountains where they planted and continue to plants thousands of seedlings. It has been so long now   since the first plantings that they are harvesting, and replanting. You'll see blind spots on the mountains from most recent harvesting. From the time you get off the highway, everything is beautiful.

These pictures are backwards, and I am too tired to change them. They start with flora and fauna at our overnight stop on the Oregon coast, then a farmer's market we stopped by on the way here, and lastly, what we actually did first in viewing and learning about the volcano.

Thank the Lord for safe arrival. The road from interior Washington to Oregon coast was the most curves I've endured so far.  The patch is working. 

A Sad Farewell

 Up at 4:18, we said a sad farewell to Andrea's old friends and my new ones. God bless them, they stumbled out of the sack for a good-bye hug at the crack of dawn. 

We rolled up to the ferry early, only to find out our ferry was fogged out.  We had to go down the road. I had being having some anxiety about this due to my vertigo, but I had my patch in place and ginger chews at the ready.

Thankfully, by looking at the yellow line beside the truck and holding a travel brochure on the side of my head so my eyes wouldn't wander to the churning water, I came through unscathed. Praise the Lord. 

Unfortunately, this ferry took us downstream so we had to make quite a trek around to the to Olympic National Park  and Hoh Rainforest. There are few temperate rainforests. I loved it, but it was different that what I expected.  I thought it would be sort of spongey, dripping and more flowers, but it isn't a tropical rainforest. I'm sure I found Tree Beard. The trail was packed dirt  or concrete mostly.  One area was packed dirt with rocks, some as big as fists, which I learned after picking myself up off the forest floor.  Alas, my glasses and camera were unscathed. I'm sporting some colorful knees this morning.  

This is a straight line of trees. An old tree fell and seedlings popped up along the length of it. So this mother tree feeds the line of babies on her back. And as happens, they aren't babies anymore.

Yes, I'm a tree hugger.

I surely believe this is the tree that trapped Pippin and Merry.

Very long moss.

And the trees are so, so tall.

These pictures are backwards.  This metered parking lot was new to me.  We waited in line to get in, maybe 20 minutes.  I just last night saw the alert on Yosemite saying it could take hours to just get through the gate. I'm not sure I'm up for that.

This picture was actually before the rainforest and we wouldn't have seen it if we hadn't had to come a different way.  The bluest water I have ever seen. 

I think we're still holding up okay.  Everything is really far and riding is tiresome, but that is the only way to get to see these places. Today is Mt. St Helen's and then the coast road. Each day, I'm still thankful and amazed at this beauty. The Creator used everyone color in the box of 64 crayons.