We have finally sailed down to the Sunshine State, or California. I have been finding out that sailing down the West Coast of the United States in the wintertime is rough. We are sailing off the West Coast in the incorrect season, so whenever we have a “weather window”, that “weather window” ends up containing 5 foot wind waves, 12 foot cross swell, and 25- 35 knots of wind… on the nose. Very uncomfortable weather to sail or motor in. Hopefully, when we get down south to San Francisco the weather will become better.
So our first stop in California was Crescent City, a nice little city that is farthest north Californian port. We rested there for a couple nights and recuperated from the last rough overnight crossing. However, I did find out something interesting. Back in 2011 when the Japanese tsunami hit and destroyed tons of stuff along the Japanese coast, some waves from that tsunami incident actually reached the United States and destroyed the marina here. I never knew that the waves of tsunami incident caused damage here in the U.S. Crescent City has since then built a new marina, and it is really nice and only a year old.
After a semi-rough 10 hour trip from Crescent City, we arrived at Eureka! I have always wanted to go to Eureka because of the name of the city is unique to any other city I have been to. We stayed at a marina on Woodley (sounds very close to Whidbey, where I am from) Island, which is across a strait from Eureka. The main thing to do in Eureka is to take a car and drive out to see the mighty redwoods.
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| The mighty redwoods. |
Now back in the late 18th and early 19thcentury, most of the redwoods were cut down for the excellent wood that they have. Redwoods take a long, long time, like hundreds of years to get to the size that they are, and people were chopping them down too fast. Luckily, some conservation movements spread to preserve the redwoods and now you can enjoy walking through the huge redwood national parks in Northern California.
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| Look at me...... and then look at the size of the tree. |
I am betting that most of you are wondering why I called this blog “Journey to land of the Ewoks” instead of like “Journey to the land of the mighty redwoods”. The reason why is because I am a huge Star Wars fan and I know that the scenes on the small, forest moon of Endor (the home of the Ewoks) were shot here in one of the redwood national parks. I was SUPER excited to not only see the tallest, oldest trees in the world, but to also be where a part of Star Wars was filmed. I literally thought I was on Endor the entire time I was walking through the redwood forest. Also, I sang the Endor theme song by John Williams some of the time. That’s how big of a fan I am of Star Wars.
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| Ewoks in all their greatness!!! |
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| It's a good thing we weren't captured by Imperial forces unlike these poor rebels. |
Now to talk a bit about the mighty redwoods themselves. Redwoods can grow up to 360 feet and are the tallest living things on Earth. Also, they can exceed 2,000 years in age, and many of the redwoods that I saw on the trail were 800 to 1500 years old. These trees, old and tall, are amazing and John Steinbeck said, “From them comes silence and awe”. I definitely agree with that.
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| This picture demonstrates how big these redwood trees can grow. |
Out of the many Redwood National Parks in the area, we went to the Humboldt Redwood State Park. It contains over 53,000 acres and has some of the world’s most impressive redwood forests, many miles of river frontage, and almost 100 miles of trails. We only had a time to do one trail so we pulled over at the Drury-Chaney Trail. This trail is a classic loop and is 2.4 miles in length. The trail surface was fantastic and it is definitely better then some of the trails I have been on in SE Asia.
The trail was amazing. The main thing to see of course was the ginormous redwoods, but I also saw many different types of ferns, other big trees, and some mushrooms. On the animal side all I saw was two birds. Unfortunately we did not see any Roosevelt elk, Ewoks, or any animals on the ground for that matter. It was so peaceful and the air, the air was so clean. It felt great just to take in big whiffs of the forest air.
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| Some neat mushrooms. |
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| The amount of plant life in the forest was amazing! |
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| An older redwood that survived some kind of fire. |
Once we finished the trail (we spent hours just walking around looking at the mighty redwood trees) and seeing no Ewoks, we speed back to the boat to take a well-needed sleep.
Thanks for reading!
May the force be with you.
Joshua Burke
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