A Guest Blog From a Trip to Northern California
Whenever friends, family, and colleagues travel, I always encourage them to take lots of photos - it's always so much fun to see images from others taken during their vacations.
Earlier this month, my property manager, Doug White, and his girlfriend Amy Wilbur, spent a week in Northern California visiting family and friends. While there, they relaxed on the beaches of Trinidad, hiked the trails of Prairie Creek State Park lined with majestic old-growth redwoods, and drove along sections of the famous Pacific Coast Highway Route 101.
Here are some of their photos, enjoy.
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- Trinidad, California is a seaside town in Humboldt County, located on the Pacific Ocean and noted for its spectacular coastline of beaches and offshore rocks. Situated directly above its own natural harbor, Trinidad is one of California’s smallest incorporated cities. In 2010, it was recorded to have a population of 367 residents.
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- This is a view from Wedding Rock Point in Trinidad. Wedding Rock is a landmark at Patrick’s Point State Park. It was named after its original caretaker got married there in the early 1900s. From this vantage point, visitors from November through April may sometimes catch a sight of migrating California Grey Whales.
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- Doug and Amy stayed in a quaint bed and breakfast where they had breathtaking sunset views with the fog rolling over the ocean.
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- Here’s Doug at the base of one of the trees in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park – a 14,000 acre park and coastal sanctuary for old-growth Coast Redwood trees.
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- While hiking, they saw many trees previously damaged by forest fires. One can see the charred bark from remains of this redwood.
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- Here is another tree damaged by fire. Thankfully, many of the trees do survive.
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- Here is a wider view from one of the trails. Coast redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, and Douglas-fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii, are two of the dominant trees of the old-growth redwood forest. The park takes its name from Prairie Creek which flows near the western edge of the park.
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- Here is the base of another redwood. Many redwoods in the park have reached 300 feet tall.
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- The park is also home to luxuriant ferns and other shade and moisture-loving plants.
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- The trees are left in place after falling. Here, ladders are built on both sides of a tree that fell across the trail.
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- Here’s Doug standing in the middle of Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway which passes through the heart of the old-growth redwood forest.
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- Have you ever seen one of these before? It’s a banana slug – a North American terrestrial slug of the genus Ariolimax. They’re often bright yellow, but they can also come in green, brown, tan, or white. Banana slugs are a very beneficial species because they help break down decomposing vegetation and return the nutrients to the soil. But don’t touch one – banana slug slime is also an anesthetic, so it could make one’s skin feel numb.
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- On this day, Doug and Amy drove along a stretch of US Route 101. Known as the Pacific Coast Highway, California U.S. Route 101, or Route 1 in some areas, runs directly along the Pacific Ocean for 790 miles, from San Diego all the way to the Oregon border.
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- Here’s another view from the road. US 101 was one of the original national routes established in 1926. Significant portions between the Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area follow El Camino Real, the commemorative route connecting the former Alta California’s 21 missions. When Fr. Junipero Serra began building his string of missions up the California coastline in the late 1700s, he needed a wagon road to connect them, so he constructed the state’s first highway. For nearly two centuries the road was the principal north-south route in California.
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- They stopped at Pelican State Beach, a five-acre beach known for its sandy dunes and driftwood. Many visitors come here for walking and beach-combing. Because of its remote location and easy-to-miss access road, it has been described as “the loneliest beach in California”.
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- This beach is in Jenner-By-The-Sea – a quaint oceanside Northern California village overlooking the mouth of the Russian River, where it meets the Pacific Ocean.
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- Another section along US Route 101 took Doug and Amy through this row of towering blue gum eucalyptus trees, Eucalyptus globulus – tall, fast-growing trees with blue-green leaves and shaggy bark.
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- And if you’ve ever been to Northern California, I am sure you are familiar with this bridge – the famous Golden Gate, a 4200-foot suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the one-mile-wide strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean.
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- Here’s a view of San Francisco from Alcatraz Island, home of the well-known federal penitentiary which housed some of the most dangerous civilian prisoners.
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- And here is a view of Oakland – a city on the east side of San Francisco Bay and Doug and Amy’s last stop before returning home to the East Coast. Here, they captured another gorgeous sunset from their hotel room to close their memorable trip.
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