Cape Blanco, Oregon to Jedediah Redwoods State Park

But first, alert, alert, alert from border to border, coast to coast and all the ships at sea.  Fred is completely distraught because I misidentified a bird in my previous post.  The cheese-it photo shows  a gray jay not a Clark's nutcracker.  Oh, the humanity!  Thanks, Trent - I'll make the correction when I get better wifi.  Whew, now Fred can get some sleep.  (Fred also wants to point out that it is not ok to feed cheese-its to wildlife.)

And now, one of my most favorite, best, most excellent beaches to visit.  Cape Blanco.

It's really the reason we came out west on this Bambi trip, so we could visit it again.  Why is it so great.  Well, let me count the ways.

First, there is no one on this beach.  Really, no one.

Miles of open beach and guess what else they have?

Agates!  This agate would be worth thousands to the right collector.  And by right collector I mean one that's blind and also doesn't know what an agate is.

I picked up many, many nice looking completely amazing rock finds on this beach.  Just a note here that if I should be found drowned someday, check my pockets for rocks.  Chances are I was not trying to commit suicide ala Virginia Woolf, I was probably just out picking up interesting rocks and wandered out too far.

Sometimes you have to work for your agate booty

Fred doing his best Vanna White impression

That rock is another great thing about this beach.  It is covered with Pelagic Cormorants, cormorant nests, cormorant babies and lots and lots of cormorant poop.  Unfortunately, the sun was in the worst spot for photos so you're stuck with a shot of Fred instead.

There are also these huge piles of whale bones, their senseless slaughter just sickens and infuriates me and.....

Oh, wait it's just driftwood

My photography skills are often sought out by strangers

Crabs also line the beach here

Sperm whale sperm or possibly kelp

Rare igneous whale offshore

Fred, stop working

In the evenings, the campers flock like lemmings with wine glasses in hand to this cliff

To watch the sun disappear for the day

The zombie survival pod never looked so good

Bank calendar photo

You can also visit this lighthouse if you're the kind of person who likes buildings with big lights on top.  We toured it on our last trip out here and we figured it probably hadn't changed much.

Look hon, our ship came in (the famous Rogue River)

See ya next time Cape Blanco, I should just buy a house near here but I would also need to buy new clothes.  Ones with more pockets.

Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

Not so very far away, near the town of Crescent City, CA we found ourselves deep in some old growth redwoods at Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.  Old Jed was an explorer and trapper out this way in the 1820s, who managed to get himself mauled in the face by a bear and eventually stabbed to death by some Comanches, so they named a park after him.  But I would have named it Big Ass Tree State Park because that describes it best.

Because as you wander around, that is the phrase you hear most often, as in "Wow, that's one big ass tree".

It's a bit of a challenge to photograph redwoods because you have to have some kind of scale and you can only get that by spreading your arms at the base, driving through a couple of big ones or climbing inside one.  Lucky for you guys, we know these complicated photo techniques.

Did you know that less than 4% of the original old growth redwoods remain?  Out of something like 2 million acres.  They are the world's tallest tree and can live to be over 2,000 years old.  If you have ever been in the redwoods, it boggles the mind that anyone could see a grove of them and think it was ok to saw them all down.  

Please tell me that sign isn't made of redwood

Rooty, toot, toot

Lovely, little grove really but we have to turn our eyes and Bambi eastward toward Lassen Volcano National Park.  Know what that means?  We are on the downhill slide to home, boo hoo.