This is a picture of me driving my truck through one of California’s redwood forests.  You can view more pictures here.

You can view more images of my trip to Yosemite National Park here.

Giant squid weighing up to 60 pounds have invaded the California waters off Newport Beach and are being caught by sport fishermen by the hundreds.

The squid showed up last week and anglers started booking twilight fishing trips over the weekend to catch them.

The animals weigh between 20 and 40 pounds, but a few fishermen have reeled in 60-pound creatures.

The Humboldt squid is also called the jumbo squid or jumbo flying squid and squirts ink to protect itself.

They can grow up to 100 pounds and 6 feet long and follow food sources. The squid have also recently been spotted off San Diego, Oregon and Washington.  [Associated Press]

These Humboldt squids are actually quite dangerous because they are known to attack people with their beaks.

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As my wife and I zig-zagged my Ford Escape up Glacier Point Road at California’s Yosemite National Park we continued to gain altitude and get some impressive views of some of the valleys that stretch away from the main Yosemite Valley:

There really wasn’t many views to see once on top of the ridgeline because the road was surrounded by thick ponderosa pine forests.  However, once the road exited the thick forest, the first look out provided an incredible view of the absolutely incredible Half Dome peak:

Half Dome is no where near the tallest mountain in the Sierra Nevadas with an altitude of only 8,842 feet, but it easily the most scenic.  The next time I come to Yosemite I have got to climb this peak.

From the look out we also got to see our first waterfall during our visit to the park:

This waterfall is probably massive during spring time snow melt season.  The look out also had some great views of the larger peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains that tower over Yosemite National Park:

On the National Geographic special, Hidden Yosemite they actually showed footage of a man that hiked back into the high country where there is still the remains of a glacier visible.  Of course the linked the shrinking glacier to global warming, which is of course absurd considering the glacier used to extend all the way through this valley just a few thousand years ago.  I guess Native-American camp fires were responsible for the shrinking glacier back then?

Anyway from up here one can see just how vast and scenic this park is:

Just short drive from the first viewpoint is the end of the road at Glacier Point where there is a large parking lot to accommodate the hordes of tourists that visit Yosemite.  For whatever reason, the day my wife and I visited the park it wasn’t very busy and we had no problem finding a parking place.  There is a small visitor center and snack bar at Glacier Point from where it is just a short walk to some spectacular views up the Yosemite Valley:

Looking at this valley it is easy to imagine the large glacier that once cut through the granite rock here thousands of years ago to create this valley:

Besides looking up the Yosemite Valley there is an area of the look out where you can look straight down towards the visitor center we had stopped at earlier in our visit to the park:

However, it is the incredible Half Dome that continued to draw my eye with its incredibly odd shape standing watch over the valley:

There is also some great views of the far off high Sierras that tower to over 13,000 feet in altitude:

Here is a closer look at these snow capped peaks:

I would definitely love to go backpacking in the back country of Yosemite in the future:

Something else we could see from the Glacier Point look out was some more waterfalls:

It was a series of two waterfalls that had a fairly decent amount of water falling down the sides of the granite cliffs:

Here is a closer look at the top waterfall:

Anyway we spent about two hours hanging out at Glacier Point enjoying the scenery and fresh air before taking one last look at the wonderous Half Dome before driving back down Glacier Point Road:

The final thing my wife and I did was visit the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia trees:

These trees were quite large and impressive:

However, the sequoias in Mariposa Grove both my wife and I thought were not a impressive as those we saw back in Jedediah Smith Redwood National Park.  However, these trees are still quite a sight to behold:

Both cars and people were dwarfed by these giant sequioa trees:

The sequoias are relative of the coastal redwoods we visited earlier in our trip, but they did not grow as high as the coastal redwoods.  However, they do grow wider which gives these trees more overall bulk then the coastal redwoods:

Their bulk in fact makes the sequoias the largest living thing in the world.

Visiting Mariposa Grove wrapped up our visit to Yosemite National Park.  We arrived at the park right when the park opened and left right before its closing hours.  So we spent a full day in the park and got to see many of its wonders, but in reality we only scratched the surface of what this park has to offer.  That is why we will definitely come back and check out this park again and next time I am bringing my hiking and camping gear because I want to get into this park’s back country.

The park overall ranks up there with some of the most scenic areas I have ever been to and is more scenic then some of the glacier carved valleys in New Zealand I have hike through such as Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers.  The park is however, not more scenic then the glacier carved fjords of Milford Sound though, which are just awe inspiring when seen.  Tasmania as well has some incredible glacier carved scenery that ranks right up there with Yosemite as well.  Anyway, I will definitely get pictures posted at some points of these incredible sights, but in the mean time I hope everyone enjoyed the pictures from my travelog to Yosemite National Park.

The foot hills were mostly steep and treeless as the access road to the national park curves along its side.  However, it wasn’t long before the mountains became cloaked in green foliage and large boulders became visible that stood testament to the glacier activity that took place here thousands of years ago that carved this valley:

Before long the valley flattened out with many meadows and pine tree forests:

However, all around the valley was just amazingly high and steep granite cliffs such as El Capitan below, that were all cut by the large glacier that once moved through these mountains cutting this valley during the last ice age:

I recently watched a National Geographic special on Yosemite and it took a rock climber 3 days to climb El Capitan.  He literally camped from a tent hanging on the side of the cliff.  Pretty incredible.

When driving through the Yosemite Valley the urge to pull over and take pictures of the stunning granite rock cliffs was a constant occurrence:

For being a place famous for its wildlife, amazingly the only wildlife besides birds we saw during our entire visit was the squirrels that seem to be all over the park:

Towards the center of Yosemite Valley is the park’s visitor center that is actually quite well done and definitely worth a visit:

Sadly we learned at the visitor center that the native people who called this valley home were driven out by the early settlers that arrived in Yosemite in the mid 1800’s prospecting for gold.  These prospectors eventually came into conflict with the native tribes, which ultimately led to the Mariposa Indian War that crushed the Native-Americans who were resisting the advancing gold prospectors.  With the Indian threat removed the Yosemite Valley was open for development, however the effort to secure the valley from the Indians had the unintended effect of causing more outsiders to see the beauty of the valley.  The writers and artists who first saw this valley painted pictures and wrote stories about this beautiful land.  Soon an an effort was launched to protect the valley from development and in 1864 Abraham Lincoln signed a bill giving the valley to the State of California to conserve.  Ultimately in 1890 the valley received federal protection by becoming Yosemite National Park.  After all these years this valley is still beautiful because of the efforts by those before us to protect it.

Here is a picture of my wife enjoying this beautiful park:

The valley floor has a number of large open meadows where we hoped to see some wildlife, but unfortunately we just couldn’t spot any on this day:

Even though we couldn’t spot any wildlife, walking across these open meadows provided some spectacular unobstructed views of the various mountains that surround the valley:

From the meadows we then hiked into the tree line a bit towards the cliffs to see if there was any water flowing down Yosemite Falls:

We walked up the path towards the waterfall and the smell of the pine trees is extremely strong in this park:

Yosemite is well known for its famous waterfalls and we really wanted to see one, but what they don’t tell you is that these waterfalls do not flow during the late summer months:

There was barely a trickle coming down this waterfall that in the spring time is an amazing torrent of water.  Here is how this waterfall would look when water is cascading down the side of these steep cliffs:

Though we didn’t see a waterfall we did see again the same type of blue bird we had saw back at Redwoods National Park:

After checking out the waterfall or rather what was left of the waterfall we then decided to take a drive up to Glacier Point to get a view of the valley from high above.  As we drove up Glacier Point Road we stopped to take this money shot of the Yosemite Valley:

Just beautiful.

Next Posting: Yosemite National Park – Part 2

We pulled off the side of the road where a number of other cars were already parked in order to get a better look at the grazing elk:

It seemed the elk were pretty used to people staring and taking pictures of them because they didn’t mind staying out in the open despite all these people looking at them.  Anyway after checking out the deer we then made our way east across the California Coastal Range:

The highway switchbacked up and over the rolling hills which provided some nice views of the surrounding country side:

The Coastal Range is no where near as rugged as the neighboring Sierra Nevada mountain range and just mostly just rolling hills, but it is in these rolling hills that the world’s largest trees thrive:

Eventually the road leading east over the range dropped in altitude and for many miles the highway drove through what appeared to have been a fairly recent massive forest fire:

Though this fire appeared to have been quite big, it was small compared to the couple of bushfire seasons I went through while living in Australia.  Towards the end of the highway my wife and I stopped at this scenic lake to enjoy the view and eat a packed lunch we brought with us:

It wasn’t to much farther that the highway we were following eventually connected on to I-5, which we took south through Sacramento.  The valley that I-5 travels along is mostly a large flat farming region with a few rivers running draining out from the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the distant horizon.   We eventually reached Modesto, California that evening where we spent the night.  The next morning we planned to drive to the nearby Yosemite National Park.

Next Posting: Yosemite National Park

The drive south was quite scenic with the highway surrounded by the rolling green hills of redwood trees.  After less then an hour of driving we eventually drove into Redwood National Park:

The location my wife and I wanted to see in the Redwood National Park was the Lady Bird Johnson Grove.  As soon as we arrived in the parking lot we could see one lone redwood tree soaring over the much younger redwood trees that surrounded it:

This was just a preview of the many more large redwood trees to come located in the grove.  This grove is named after the wife of former US President Lyndon B. Johnson.  Lady Bird Johnson was a well known environmentalist in her day and in 1969 Richard Nixon dedicated this grove to her due to her environmental work:

From the parking lot we followed a trail into the dense forest to find more of these monsterous redwood trees:

The under growth in this grove of trees was about as thick as the other redwood groves I visited in the area:

At first we didn’t see any large redwood trees, but we did see a number of these blue birds that call this area of the forest home:

Eventually the trees did come into view and yes they were quite large:

All we needed was some Ewoks to show up to feel like we were on Endor:

Here is the tops of the trees pictured in the above photograph:

A number of the large redwoods had these hollows cut out of them by forest fires that sometimes occur in these forests:

These holes do not kill the trees because of how hardy the redwoods are, but they do provide shelter for the various animals and birds that call this forest home.  The trees in this grove are actually not quite as red as other redwoods since it is located at over 1,000 feet in altitude and away from the coast were the redwoods tend to me at its reddest color:

The hike through the grove takes only about an hour and is definitely worth checking out if visiting the park:

As nice as this walk through the woods is the Stout Memorial Grove to the north I found to be more scenic than the redwoods in this national park.

After visiting Redwood National Park my wife and I spent the night at nearby Eureka, California.  Eureka was located in a nice sea side location, but it was a bit of an odd town filled with loggers and hippies.  Not that bad of a place though and my wife and I had a nice time staying there.  However, the next morning we planned to drive east across the coastal range to reach I-5 to take us nearer to our next destination at Yosemite National Park.

Next Posting: East Across the California Coastal Range

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After walking around and checking out the amazing trees at the Trees of Mystery park along the northern California coastline we then walked over to catch a ride on the gondola that takes visitors to the top of a high hill that provides sweeping views across redwood country:

The ride up was actually a pretty cool experience and one of the better gondola rides I have been on.  However, it doesn’t top my all time favorite gondola ride in Queenstown, New Zealand though.  Anyway, after about a five minute ride we reached the top of the hill:

The views from the top of the hill were as good as advertised because we had sweeping views in all directions to include being able to see the distant ocean:

One of the park employees on top the hill told us that often times the summit of this hill is shrouded in fog, but we were lucky that today had relatively clear views in all directions of the surrounding redwood country:

In every direction the trees seemed endless, but the areas open to logging was quite obvious in some areas:

From the look out we also had the opportunity to see an osprey that made its home on top of a redwood tree:

If you look closely you can see the osprey in the picture above sitting on a branch on the right side of the tree.  These ospreys are common in the redwood trees and are exclusively fish eaters.  With all the rivers and creeks that run through these hills, these ospreys have plenty of fish to choose from.  After enjoying the views on top of the hill we then got back on the gondola for the ride down the hill.

Now we began to walk on the trail that would take us back to the park’s entrance.  Along the way we saw yet another example of how resilient these redwood trees are at sprouting new life even when the tree falls over:

The final portion of the walk was through an area that a local artist has displayed a number of wood carvings depicting Paul Bunyan’s story:

Of course there was a big wood carving of a bear as well that are supposed to frequent these woods:

The trail then exits into the visitor center and gift shop that surprisingly had a really nice Native-American display:

This display was a welcome bonus for someone like myself that is interested in Native-American history.  I spent about an hour in the visitor center reading all the displays about the local tribes as well as about Native-Americans in general in the United States.

Overall we spent about 4 hours in the park and had an absolute great time.  It was definitely worth the $14 admission fee to get in and is a great compliment to visiting Redwood National Park down the road.

Next Posting: Redwood National Park

Locating the Trees of Mystery is easy because adjacent to the parking are two huge statues of Paul Bunyan and his ox babe that cannot be missed by anyone driving by on Highway 101:

The Paul Bunyan statue is 49 feet tall so it is quite huge.  The statue also had a moving head with someone with a speaker that would talk to people walking by.  Needless to say the kids had a blast with this larger than life statue.  I don’t know if the squirrels were enjoying the giant Paul Bunyan or not either, but it seems like there was as many squirrels running around as their were little kids:

Anyway the Trees of Mystery is a privately owned park located right between the Jedidiah Smith Redwood State Park to the north and the Redwoods National Park to the south.  For being privately owned land it has an incredible amount of some of the most unusual redwood trees you will ever see.  The first of these trees can be seen from the parking lot is the Family Tree, which is a unique tree that shows the redwoods ability of having other trees sprout out and up from its branches:

Here is a closer look at this phenomenon:

There is plenty more incredible trees to see within the park for only a $14.00 admission that is worth every dollar.  A trail that is little less then a mile takes visitors to each of the unusual trees located within the park’s boundaries.  However, the beginning of the trail takes visitors through this nicely manicured garden:

The park does have a bit of a religious feel to it, which is quite evident by this statue of Saint Francis of Assisi:

Readers of this site may remember where I have run into Saint Francis of Assisi before.  Saint Francis is actually the patron saint of animals, which apparently the park has a lot of.  Does anyone know if their is a patron saint of trees?  Anyway enough of talking about patron saints, lets take a look at these incredible trees.  The first huge tree that we came upon was this tree known as the Elephant Tree for obvious reasons:

Here is a tree known as the Upside-Down Tree that is an extremely long tree that grows across the trail:

If you look closely to the bottom left of the photo this tree actually grows horizontal out of the base of a large redwood tree that grows vertical.  So this one tree has two trunks with one growing horizontal and the other vertical.  Extremely weird tree, but they don’t call these the Trees of Mystery for nothing. The next tree is known as the Nature’s Underpass due to the fact that the trail goes under the tree:

It was actually a tight squeeze for a big guy like me to fit through the opening underneath the tree, but I was able to pull it off.  Besides trees there was also a lot of wild flowers to be seen in the park such as these beautiful blue flowers:

Next we came upon the hulk of a massive tree that had long collapsed to the forest floor:

This tree is appropriately named the Fallen Giant since the tree’s length is measured at 320 feet.  However, this tree is far from dead because if you look closely small tree are growing out of the fallen trunk of this tree.  This is because even if a redwood tree falls over, it doesn’t necessarily die as long as some of its roots remains in the ground like this tree:

Something else I just happened to notice while visiting this Fallen Giant is that these trees were at one time featured on Ripley’s Believe It or Not:

Believe me when I tell you that these trees are incredible.  Anyway, here is another example of one tree growing with two trunks, but this time they are both growing straight up right next to each other:

Besides the many unusual trees growing in the park there are many more typical redwoods of large size that grow in the park as well:

As amazing as all these trees are in this park, without a doubt the most incredible tree is the Cathedral Tree:

As I mentioned earlier these redwood trees can fall over but it doesn’t mean die and that is what happened with this tree.  Long ago a redwood fell over and these trees sprouted out of the log and grew straight up.  They may look like they are different trees, but they are all actually growing from the same tree:

Will the trees growing out of the Fallen Giant look like this one day as well?

Here is plaque located at the base of the Cathedral Tree:

The Cathedral Tree plays host to Easter Services every year and is also a very popular location for holding weddings.  Here is how the Cathedral Tree looks when standing at its base:

A short walk from the Cathedral Tree is the largest tree in the park, the Brotherhood Tree:

By the way, that is me standing in front of the tree.  This tree is 2,000 years old, 19 feet in diameter, and 297 feet tall.  The tree a few years back lost 74 feet of its height when a large wind storm blew the top of the tree off.  At 297 meters tall this tree is still one of the largest living things in the world.  Here is a view of the tree’s upper reaches:

Pretty impressive and I would love to climb one of these trees some day like these guys had a chance to do.

Anyway this was the last of the big and unusual trees to see thus we were off to take a ride on the gondola that takes visitor to the top of a high hill to get sweeping views of the redwood forest.

Next Posting: Trees of Mystery – Part 2

The trees that surrounded the road were no where near as big as the trees I had hiked around in Stout Grove, but they were still big enough to dwarf my Ford:

Looking into the dense forest it was pretty clear that most of the trees in this forest that surrounded the road had been logged before and that these trees were probably all under 50 years old:

Eventually the road exited the dense forest and my wife and I pulled into the small town of Crescent City.

There is not much to the town, but it was a nice enough location where a whole lot of people were having fun flying kites out on the beach:

My wife and I had dinner at a local diner which was pretty good before finding a hotel to stay at.  The next day we planned on driving along the northern California coast line to the Trees of Mystery, which our waitress at the diner highly recommended to us:

So after eating breakfast we began driving south on Highway 101 and in the early morning sunshine we could see the famous fog of northern California, which provides the moisture necessary for the large redwood trees to grow:

Eventually Highway 101 rises from the beach and into the hills that steeply plunge into the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean:

This coastline actually reminded me a bit of the Great Ocean Road in Australia’s southeast, but not quite as dramatic.  From a look out on the first hill, a great view of Crescent City was available:

What I found more interesting is an information marker that said that Crescent City lies in an identified tsunami zone due to frequent earthquakes that occur off shore:

I have never experienced a tsunami before and I have no plans of living in Crescent City to find out.  Here is a picture of my Ford from the look out safely above any possible tsunami:

Anyway we continued south down the highway and a fractured coastline began to come into view:

Something else that was also noticeable is that the trees along the coastline are relatively small compared to the trees in the interior which is probably because of the salt spray that the trees have to deal with every day.  The weakness of these trees is quite evident by how many trees we saw that were cut in half by the wind:

Fortunately on this day there was little wind and just mostly beautiful blue skies:

The highway began to drop in elevation and approach the sea shore again:

My wife and I parked at the beach which wasn’t much of beach and rather just a bunch of rocks:

The waves coming in were quite high this day, which probably means that a storm is coming somewhere out in the ocean:

We eventually came upon another beach had some sand with a few people out lounging about in:

People weren’t the only things lounging out in the sun as this seagull was enjoying the sunshine as well:

My wife and I then stopped to get something to eat at the Yurok Indian Reservation and this town had the nicest homes I have seen on any Indian reservation I have been on:

Quite a nice place with quite an ideal setting along the Klamath River.  The town was also right next to the Trees of Mystery park which we planned on visiting next.