Seeing Trees

Smelling Trees

In Trees

Of Trees

One with Trees

Being Trees

This time we arranged the tour the night before online through GuideYou.com and called the next morning to double check they were really going to pick us up at the hotel.  They came right on time.  The trip was 45 minutes a lot of it descending down steep turns on a very narrow road.  We were lucky to come across a tour as soon  as we arrived at the park gate:Our tour guide explained these huge trees lived over 2,000 years and grow from tiny seed cones or when stressed the trees produce burls that little trees grow from creating family circles:

They can grow so tall because their needles absorb water from the fog.  These tall trees have shallow roots and support each other through holding on to each other in the forest. One can go on line and listen to a recording taken in the lodge of a tree falling.  It takes 200 years for a fallen tree to decompose. There are very few birds in the redwood forest because the tannin in the bark repels insects and the bark is up to 12 inches thick.  The forest floor was covered with moss and redwood sorrel:

The sorrel tastes like sweet tarts and a lovely creek wandered through the woods.  The trees with moss are not redwood, moss does not grow on the redwoods.  Our visit was way too short.  I wished I could stay longer, much longer, in fact I wouldn’t mind being a banana slug, if I could live under the redwoods: