Day 19

Today we made the relatively short trip from Crater Lake National Park to Redwoods National Park in Northern California. When we arrived, we immediately drove through the Jedediah Smith portion of the park, and took a short hike through a grove of coastal redwood trees. These trees are cousins of the giant Sequoia trees we had seen two years ago when we traveled to Sequoia National Park. The coastal redwoods are generally taller and less voluminous than their inland cousins. In any event, they were very impressive.

After seeing the trees, we traveled into Crescent City, California, which is located on the Pacific Ocean. We took the opportunity to get our feet wet in the Pacific, venturing onto Crescent Beach.

We then drove further down the coast, where we got an opportunity to see dozens of fishermen catching salmon as they were beginning to make their upstream runs in the Klamath River. Some of the fishermen we saw were actually sea lions, catching their afternoon meal.

Finally, we made it to our campground, where we set up camp and made dinner. With only three nights of camping left, we're in “pot-luck” mode, where we're just cooking whatever it is that we have left so that we get rid of most of our food. Tonight's menu was cheese quesadillas (which turned out really well) as an appetizer, with left over kielbasa from our jambalaya dinner, paired with scalloped potatoes with cheese sauce. Josh & I were both very happy with the results!

Tomorrow, we'll be spending the day here in Redwoods National Park. On Wednesday, we move on to our final destination … Lassen Volcanic National Park.

It really is hard to believe that this is all coming to an end … there's definitely more sadness than joy about this.

With no internet access once again, this post will have to wait until tomorrow, when we're in one of the towns along highway 101, where we'll have connectivity.