Now THIS is a tree:
I had the un-enviable task of closing up my company's office in San Jose, CA this weekend. I worked for a while on Sunday, and then decided to find a place to go hiking and explore. The "Welcome to the Bay Area" guide in my hotel room mentioned Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California's oldest State Park, which contains 18,000 acres of old growth and recovering forest, many of it Redwoods.
Well, the drive there was amazing. I love mountain driving, but in New Jersey you rarely ever get the chance.
The road was long, narrow, and twisty. I had fun with my rented Subaru Outback and the Adam Sandler CD I found in some laid-off employees desk. It took about an hour to get there, but it was well worth the drive.
I heard about a trail in the park that lead to "Buzzards Roost" the highest elevation in the park at 2200'. Deciding that I was up to the challenge, I took off. Being the out of shape slob that I am, I found it difficult, but fun. It changes 1200' of elevation in just 2 miles, a lot of the shift occurring suddenly. The trail also gets much narrower and less maintained as you reach the top. I accidentally wandered off the trail to a cliff face, and wondered if I was supposed to climb up. I made it about 1/2 way when I realized that I could fall and kill myself and that I was better off going back down. Retracing my steps, I found where the trail was supposed to go and followed it up to the top.
The view from the top was incredible. It was amazing to see miles and miles of unspoiled trees and mountains in every direction. I had the summit all to myself - in fact the trail was pretty much empty. There was a benchmark at the tip of the mountain that I will look up later.
Several times as I was going up I was really temped to stop and turn around. I'm glad that I pressed on. It was a great sense of accomplishment to get to the top. The amazing thing was walking through the giant redwood forest hearing NOTHING except the rustling of leaves and the sounds of a brook that followed the path. It made me realize how insignifigant we are, and how selfish it is how we destroy nature. I can finally see why some people are fanatics about the environment. I'm officially a tree hugger, even though I can't get my arms around a Redwood.
The interesting thing was how different it was from the Pine Barrens at the lower elevations. I would say that most of the Pine Barrens is less than 100 years old. To see trees that have been around for thousands of years is amazing. Once you get to the higher elevations and the Redwoods thin out, Pines take over. They're so different than our Pitch Pines, though. They're smaller, and their cones fall open.
Here's a ton of photos: http://www.njpinebarrens.com/~bruset/album34
Most of them have camera shake, since the light in the forest was pretty low. So look at the mid-sized images and don't look too hard at the images in full size since many of them are blurry.
I'll be on the plane back to NJ tomorrow. And then in a week or so, I'm off to Denver.
I had the un-enviable task of closing up my company's office in San Jose, CA this weekend. I worked for a while on Sunday, and then decided to find a place to go hiking and explore. The "Welcome to the Bay Area" guide in my hotel room mentioned Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California's oldest State Park, which contains 18,000 acres of old growth and recovering forest, many of it Redwoods.
Well, the drive there was amazing. I love mountain driving, but in New Jersey you rarely ever get the chance.
The road was long, narrow, and twisty. I had fun with my rented Subaru Outback and the Adam Sandler CD I found in some laid-off employees desk. It took about an hour to get there, but it was well worth the drive.I heard about a trail in the park that lead to "Buzzards Roost" the highest elevation in the park at 2200'. Deciding that I was up to the challenge, I took off. Being the out of shape slob that I am, I found it difficult, but fun. It changes 1200' of elevation in just 2 miles, a lot of the shift occurring suddenly. The trail also gets much narrower and less maintained as you reach the top. I accidentally wandered off the trail to a cliff face, and wondered if I was supposed to climb up. I made it about 1/2 way when I realized that I could fall and kill myself and that I was better off going back down. Retracing my steps, I found where the trail was supposed to go and followed it up to the top.
The view from the top was incredible. It was amazing to see miles and miles of unspoiled trees and mountains in every direction. I had the summit all to myself - in fact the trail was pretty much empty. There was a benchmark at the tip of the mountain that I will look up later.
Several times as I was going up I was really temped to stop and turn around. I'm glad that I pressed on. It was a great sense of accomplishment to get to the top. The amazing thing was walking through the giant redwood forest hearing NOTHING except the rustling of leaves and the sounds of a brook that followed the path. It made me realize how insignifigant we are, and how selfish it is how we destroy nature. I can finally see why some people are fanatics about the environment. I'm officially a tree hugger, even though I can't get my arms around a Redwood.
The interesting thing was how different it was from the Pine Barrens at the lower elevations. I would say that most of the Pine Barrens is less than 100 years old. To see trees that have been around for thousands of years is amazing. Once you get to the higher elevations and the Redwoods thin out, Pines take over. They're so different than our Pitch Pines, though. They're smaller, and their cones fall open.
Here's a ton of photos: http://www.njpinebarrens.com/~bruset/album34
Most of them have camera shake, since the light in the forest was pretty low. So look at the mid-sized images and don't look too hard at the images in full size since many of them are blurry.
I'll be on the plane back to NJ tomorrow. And then in a week or so, I'm off to Denver.
