Post 11 Redwood National Park, Napa Valley

Oct 1-11

The week began with us entering the state of California directly into Redwood country.  Like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, it’s hard to capture the magnificence of these trees in a picture.  You need to lay your own eyes on them to appreciate their size and grandeur.

Redwoods aren’t the largest tree as far as diameter (we estimated the average to be about 14 feet) but they are the tallest tree on the planet, the largest known one being almost 380 feet.  Surprisingly, for such a tall tree, the root system is very shallow, only about ten feet.  How do they not topple over???  They make up for their lack of root depth by spreading the roots out over about 60 feet and intertwine with surrounding redwood roots.  They basically hold each other up from falling over due to high winds and floods, both leading causes of redwood death.

We camped in the town of Crescent City, close to both Redwood National and State Parks.  On our first day, we spent our morning following our guide, Guy, as he led us down the coast to see some of the California ocean scenery.  We spent time both on the beach and on overlooks high above the coast. 

In the afternoon, we hiked the Simpson-Reed Grove trail in the National/State park to get up close and personal with these trees.  You would think that such a huge tree would produce huge pinecones.  No, they are tiny.  Maybe an inch big. Some of them do germinate and grow into redwoods, but most new redwoods grow out of the burls at the base of cut or toppled trees. 

During our time in the groves, we were on the lookout for banana slugs.  They love the damp environment in the redwood forests.  We were lucky enough to see two small ones.  They grow as long as 10 inches!!

We stopped at one of the visitor centers to stamp our passbook, but sadly, it was closed due to the shutdown.

The state bird of California is the California Quail.  We’ve seen a lot of them in groups of 8-10 but they’re very shy.  Every time we tried to get a picture they run away…really fast, like road runners.  They’re stinking cute though.  We'll keep trying to get a picture.

On day two, we hiked Stout Grove just because we hadn’t spent enough time around these giants.  Then we walked at Pebble Beach, which has no pebbles but tons of driftwood and huge bunches of seaweed.  We ended our day with a beer at the local brewery.

We left Crescent City, but there was a lot more park land on our way to our next destination. At the most southern tip of the park at Elk Valley, the visitor center was open, staffed by volunteers and state park rangers.

A quick overnight at the halfway point to break up the trip and it was on to Napa Valley.

We decided to stay in Napa for the week to catch our breath and rest.  Napa and Sonoma Valleys are the leading wine-producing areas in the country.  There are literally 100s of vineyards in the area and our plan was to visit a few to learn a little bit about wine.  Our beer knowledge is pretty good, wine…not so much.  They offer many tours here that will take you to several wineries for a full day.  Not interested in that??  Maybe hop on a Cannabis Tour, yup, that's a thing.  Lends a whole new meaning to High Tea.

Our campground was a pretty typical RV park, but it also had a great native wildflower garden in memory of the California Native Wildflower Society President.  It was a large garden with many places to sit and socialize or contemplate.  The site also had so many birds singing to us while we made dinner.  We spent our dinner prep time with our binoculars around our necks to watch the birds.  Below is a picture of the camper (?) next door to us. They were an interesting couple from Germany touring North and South America from the Antarctic to Patagonia. Bit of overkill if you ask me.

Most of the wineries are only open Thursday-Monday.

We decided to explore the towns of Napa and Sonoma on our first couple of days in the area.  Napa was a little fancy shmancy for us.  Lots of upscale shops and restaurants.  Sonoma was wonderful.  They have a beautiful central plaza/green space surrounded by historical buildings from the 1830’s. Sonoma was the northern most military base of the Mexican army before California was part of the US.  The buildings served as the barracks and hotels for the Mexican soldiers and visitors.  We toured the old buildings and then made our way through downtown, stopping at the ice cream store, the cheese shop and the brewery.

It’s been cold since we were in Yellowstone and last week we added some rain, so it’s been nice to get back to some warm weather here in Napa.  In fact, it’s a little too warm.  On Tuesday, it was 90 degrees, so we opted for an indoor adventure, a tour of the Jelly Belly factory in neighboring Fairfield!!  This is the largest of the Jelly Belly factories.  We toured the factory building, museum and picked up some samples in the gift shop. Have you seen any Jelly Belly portraits? Included are pictures of a few of the many hanging throughout the factory. 

It’s been 75 years since the Peanuts comic strip made its appearance.  Charles Shultz was born in nearby Santa Rosa so we ventured out to the Charles Shultz Museum to get a sense of the history of Charlie Brown and the gang.  Lots of chuckles throughout the exhibits. Schultz drew 17,897 strips! Who is your favorite of the Peanuts gang?

 

The wineries were open on Thursday so we started out at St Francis Winery.  We each got a glass of their sauv blanc and headed out for a self guided tour of the vineyard.  We learned a lot about the different varieties of grapes, their green practices and how they graft new vines onto old root systems.  We stopped at a couple of other wineries before heading back to our campsite.

We were headed to a hotel for the weekend but stopped into a couple of wineries on our way.

As much as we enjoyed the wine tastings, we also enjoy sampling craft beer and spent Saturday at the Napa Valley Beer Fest. There were 12 breweries and a Cidery there to sample.  We chatted with a lot of the locals (including a few people who relocated from Boston many years back), played Ladder Ball and listened to live music. All in all, a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

It was a fun week in Napa Valley.  Good to warm our bones as we’re soon headed to Yosemite where the highs are only in the 40s.  Brrr…  But before that, on to San Francisco and some more of the Pacific Coast.

P.S. If it looks like Cindy is quite often wearing the same striped longsleeve shirt, she is, but does wear a different shirt under it each time. It's her go-to on crisp days.....