Redwood National Park

Stout Grove

Well I've been pretty bad at posting recently, but I have been up to a few up to a few fun adventures. Kerrie and I headed down to the redwood national park for her birthday. On the way, we also stopped at Oregon Caves National Monument.

It's hard to take good pictures in a cave.

Spiral Staircase to the underworld

Heart of the cave

Monster Column

We had a four day weekend so we took our time and enjoyed the vacation and the road trip. The partially crappy part and good part was that it was a rest week for me training wise, but I still had to put in a few longer runs.

The first night we camped on the side of the road up by the Oregon caves. Our campground was closed and we didnt feel like driving all the way back down the winding road and pay $25 for less than a half a day of camping. It worked out, but would have been nice to have the rocket box.

The seat in the Element hold almost completely flat. Super nice for car camping.

All packed up

The next day we headed down to Crescent City and checked out Stout Grove and Boy Scout Tree in the Jedediah Smith State Park. This was our first experience with the big trees and it was breath taking. The road in and out of the area was also super cool. It was a cross between Jurassic Park and Return of the Jedi.

From there, we carried on to Mill Creek Campground and promptly crashed due to being so tired from the night before and not eating enough that day.

The next day we got up and headed down the coast. We stopped at Klamath Overlook to check out some whales and also made our way along the coast on a back gravel road which was right next to the ocean. I'd say that except for the trees, driving these cool back roads were pretty cool

Hard to make out the spray from the whale on these photos

Cool backroads

Old WW2 covert radar station.

Eventually we made it to Prairie Creek Campground, which was definitely a cool campground, although the Stellar Jays were particularly annoying with their scavenging traits.

Kerrie likes marshmallows

I was able to get out for a 16mi run and covered a good section of the park, but it was pretty cool to be out there all alone with all those massive trees. It was a little spooky though not seeing anyone out on the trail till the very end towards Fern Canyon. The trails were in great condition and it would have been lots of fun to explore the area more thoroughly.

That night Kerrie and I went out to try and spot some elk. We barely made out of the entrance of the campground and there they were right in front of us. It was pretty cool to see them up close.

The next day we went and checked out Fern Canyon and the beach on another sweet dirt road. Fern canyon was pretty spectacular with all the bright green ferns and cool creeks. We also spent a good amount of time checking out the beach before heading down to Eureka to check out a few breweries. In the end, we went to Lost Coast Brewery, Redwood Curtain Brewing and Six Rivers Brewery.

Late night fireside Scrabble game

All trip must come to an end so on Monday morning we packed up the car and headed up 101 towards Reedsport, OR. Our goal was to check out the Southern Oregon coast as neither of us had ever been there. We stopped at a few roadside trails, Cape Blanco, and Oregon Dune National Recreation area before heading East to I-5.

Arches. Sam Boardman Scenic Highway

Towards Cape Blanco lighthouse

UNT

Bryan