The trees are real, and they are spectacular!

The long and winding road

The detour around the landslide that took two days was worth it.  We had to go quite far south along the coast, then cut east over the mountains (crazy road), turn north up Interstate 5 (easy drive), head west on highway 299 back over the mountains (even crazier road-saw a woman barfing on the side-she was likely car sick.  It would be horrible as a passenger in the back seat), then turn south again to get to the Avenue of the Giants.
By the time we finished driving on highway 299 (the crazy winding road) it was dinner time.  Fortunately, we weren't tossing ours like the lady was but we needed to find a place for the night.  Camping in California is very expensive.  The state parks are $35 a night and they don't have electric hook ups.  We just spent two nights in a private park which cost $48 per night.



"Campino"-camping at the casino


Casinos here allow RVs to spend the night in their parking lot.  The Garmin showed a casino-the Cher-Ae Heights Casino, and we pulled in there.  It was kind of hard to find and a little out of the way but it was in a great spot overlooking the Pacific.  After dinner in the van we went in to the casino to join their member club-casinos give you free credit to play with in the slot machines when you join.  We got really lucky-they gave me $50 and Al $75.  We played on their money and came out with $59, plus stayed there for free.  We have a new term -campino-means camping at the casino.  We're now fans of the idea. 

After our restful night at the campino we headed south to the Avenue of the Giants.  This road is a scenic 31 mile tour of the giant redwoods, within the Humboldt Redwoods State Park.  

These trees are huge. The largest redwood on record is the Dyerville Giant.  It fell in 1991 and now it is laying on the forest floor.  It measures 370 feet long (two feet taller than Niagara Falls).  It is 17 ft in diameter, 52 feet in circumference and probably weighs over 1 000 000 pounds. 



Fallen Dyerville Giant-look way down-you'll see
Al at the 100 ft point




Roots of fallen redwood




Fetch boy!





The greatest accumulation of plant mass ever recorded was in a redwood stand here in this park.  This temperate rainforest region has seven times the living and dead organic material of that found in a tropical rainforest.  Redwoods are so huge that they live in three climate zones at once.  The base of each tree is in one set of climatic conditions, the stem in an other, and the crown in yet another.  The trees can be experiencing cool, moist conditions at their base, and at the same time have dry, windy conditions at the top.  Redwoods need great amounts of moisture-65 inches of rainfall per year.  They help create their own microclimate through the transpiration of moisture from the leaves to the atmosphere.  A very large redwood can release up to 500 gallons of water into the air per day.    

We stopped in at the Redwood visitors centre.  On display was a motorhome made out of one fallen redwood trunk.  Charles Kellogg built it and called it the Travel Log.  He took it on tour in 1917 to bring awareness of the need to save the redwood forests to the rest of the USA.

Inside the motor-home
complete with bed, dresser,
sink, toilet

Outside of motor-home, carved out of one tree trunk

Back on the highway, heading north up the coast, we saw a warning sign with a flashing light.  It read, "Watch for Elk next 2 miles."  We turned a bend and there they were.  A whole herd!!