The first leg of our longed for roadtrip was up into the far North of California.
After thinking about it forever, we finally started our road trip by heading North.First stop was Point Reyes.But the weather was awful, and we headed off again fairly quickly.First night of the trip was in Mendocino, a really charming little town on the coast. They have a lot of these preserved old water towers around town.First thing in the morning I shot off for a quick run.And then (after coffee!) we did a fantastic walk along the coastlines in Mendocino.The weather was fantastic, very lucky. And we loved this walk.An excellent first hike together.We then continued up North towards Redwood National Park. Along the way we started to see a lot of bigfoot related stuff which we loved.We turned off the main road and took the Avenue of the Giants. Which was an excellent decision because it was so pretty.We arrived in Crescent City, our base for Redwood National Park. Chad and I had spent some time here in January.Really pretty sunset. This lighthouse gets cut off as the tide comes in. We saw several people have to wade back to land!Next morning we headed up into the forests. Even the drive is absolutely magical.We did a hike called Boy Scout Tree and it was superb. Incredible, massive redwoods around every corner.This spot was just stunning with the light and the trees.It really is impossible to properly capture how huge these trees are.We then moved on to Stout Grove where we grabbed picnic gear and hiked down to the river. It was AMAZING, and we stayed for almost 6 hours!The water was cool, but not at all freezing. And absolutely clear. I loved swimming up stream and then floating back down again.They erect this bridge every summer and then take it down again before the wet season. It’s a lovely little addition and a great way to see the water.We set up quite close to the bridge because this spot had a magical view and good sun.The water was just perfectly clear. At times it seemed invisible.We were loving it so much that we just stayed around. We grabbed a bottle of wine from the car and settled in.We spotted a little otter, but it proved extremely elusive. Until almost everyone had left later in the evening and he popped up again!This has to be one of the coolest wildlife sightnigs ever!A still from the video. We how he pushes off like that!The next morning it was off further North to Oregon. We loved the forest so much that we took that route again.
