The NPS bills the 7 parks in NoCal and SoOr as the "Circle of Discovery". For us it was more of a shepherd's crook as we flew into SFO and out from the Redwoods while circling with Claire and Peter's family.
Erin is training for high school XC and trying to run 5 days a week. Our first night we stayed on the east side of the SF Bay in Hayward and ran on a picturesque bayfront recreation trail. For the first of many times on this trip I said to myself, I wish we had something like this near my East Coast home.
The list of NPS sites commemorating writers is short: Longfellow in Cambridge MA, Carl Sandburg in Flat Rock NC, Edgar Allan Poe in Philadelphia, and Eugene O'Neill in Danville, CA. O'Neill's home is in a private development and is only accessible from a NPS shuttle.
Eugene O'Neill is considered the founder of modern American theater and spent his last productive years in this house that he built with his 3rd wife Carlotta Monterey (aka Hazel Tassinge). The tour guide did a great job describing the life of this "complex" man who to my 21st century ears sounded like a depressive self-absorbed jerk. His two sons died by suicide and he rebuffed all communications from his remaining daughter Oona (who went on to marry Charlie Chaplin, and whose granddaughter Oona Chaplin went on to marry Robb Stark)
Eugene didn't like to see his reflection in normal mirrors and used this black tinted one instead
From our hotel's water dispenser. Now I can get behind sediment filtration, activated carbon, reverse osmosis, and reactive oxygen as purification methods. But these other 3? Alkaline, electrolytes, and yes, coconut carbon - those icons are great but why on earth do I need them? How toxic is this California water?
On the way north we stopped at V. Sattui vineyard in Napa
Thanks to our Arkansas trip I can recognize rice being cultivated in the central valley north of Sacramento. In an area of semi-arid climate, and in a state with chronic water shortages further south, it amazes me that California continues to grow water-intensive crops. (Learn more here about rice in California)
Redding was HOT!
At Whiskeytown National Recreation area we recreated with free kayaking on Whiskeytown Lake. It was the only outdoor activity bearable in the heat.
Heeere's Shorty!
Tessie's nonalcoholic beverage
On the way out of Redding it was even hotter
Lassen is in the mountains at the southern end of the Cascades or northern end of the Sierra Nevada.
The snowpack was very deep this winter and the road through the park opened just the day before we arrived. Many of the hiking trails remained closed for avalanche concerns.
Lassen has far fewer geothermal features than Yellowstone and these sulfur mudpots were the only ones accessible to us.
In the 1800s a guide named Bumpass fell through the mud and burned his foot so badly that it had to be amputated. This area of the park was completely snowbound
From 111 degrees one day to playing on 8 feet of snowpack the next. Only in California!
Tule Lake is the site of another WWII Japanese internment camp (the other 2 under NPS control are Manzanar and Minidoka). Tule Lake was the largest of the 10 relocation sites and incarcerated 30,000 people on a windswept dried lake bed in the remote mountains.
Nearby is Lava Beds NM, where 24 lava tubes are open for exploration
As we all learned, a lava tube is formed by an underground river of magma that melts its way through the surrounding rock and then oozes out an opening, leaving an empty cave
This one had ice at the bottom
Crater Lake, the deepest, cleanest, and bluest lake in North America
We hiked along the rim trail where every overlook offered another captivating view. The lake is only 6 miles wide and as you walk around it, your vantage point is everchanging
The Lodge was small compared to other major parks, but they don't have a winter season due to the high snowfall. This season's snowfall was 624 inches, or 52 feet.
We stayed in cabins in the main campground, where the snowdrifts were useful chillers. The rooms didn't have refrigerators and the camp store didn't sell ice. A guy from the cabin next door asked me how we kept our food cold without any ice. I said that we packed our coolers with bags of snow, and he said sheepishly, "Yeah I should have thought of that".
Those expressions are misleading but I love them. In fact, the girls were great in the backseat of our brand-new Nissan Rogue rental
The Great Cats World Park in Cave Junction OR had 19 species of cats that seemed to be well cared for. Out of the Crater Lake mountains the temps were back to the 90s and I had to feel bad for the tigers and lynx who seemed overdressed for the heat.
Oregon Caves is conveniently situated midway between Crater Lake and Crescent City
The cave hasn't attracted as much attention as Mammoth Cave, Wind Cave, or Jewel Cave
and unlike most caves whose stone is limestone, at Oregon Caves the limestone was metamorphosed into marble before eroding from its resident river Styx
Slowly dripping water from above created these soda straw formations, which in other caves would have been destroyed by visitors long ago, but here were amazingly intact
Drapery formations
After exiting and on the way back to the entrance there was a mini-cave to play in
Coming out of the mountains to Crescent City, the temperature dropped into the 60s
We visited Enderts Beach at low tide
The perspective on this photo is bonkers because I'm about 20 feet above the kids and that piece of driftwood is from a redwood tree!
We thought this photo would make a good jigsaw puzzle
In addition to the beaches, Redwood National and State Parks stitches together a series of old-growth forests of coast redwoods, the tallest trees on Earth. This is Stout Grove in Jed Smith State Park.
The Boy Scout tree in Jed Smith State Park
All during our drives we used walkie-talkies to communicate between our two cars. As we drove through Crescent City one of us pointed out the Grocery Outlet Bargain Market on the right and we were surprised when another voice from the walkie said "we're open now, come in for savings". The next day as we drove by we heard the employees chattering and Peter piped in "Code Brown on Aisle 2". We shopped there later that day and here is the Aisle 2, but there is no Code Brown in sight.
Banana slug
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
The little brown bat was sleeping outside one of the visitor centers. Since the sun rarely shines through the marine layer in the summer, this little guy probably thought he was already in a cave.
We reserved a permit to visit Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek State Park. Apparently the resident elk can get defensive around their calves
Our only group photo, from our last day in Fern Canyon
