Avenue of Giants

Cartoons had led me to believe that when traveling through the Redwoods, the highway went through the center of these massive trees. I was disappointed to learn that TV had lied to me again, although I did learn about two trees that you could indeed drive through.

I dropped off the 101 for a bit to take an old section of highway called the Avenue of Giants. The trees were even more massive then the ones I had seen just a short time before. As I hiked through a small section of the massive forest, I was reminded of how much it looked like the moon of Endor. I almost expected see at any moment a Storm trooper fly passed me on a speeder, and A.T.’s lumbering about. I was quickly snapped back from my Star Wars fantasy into reality, when I heard this awful creak and the moaning of the tree limbs in the upper canopy. This was followed by a snap, pop snap fffffwwwwwwwwwwww crack THUD! A few hundred yards or more away from me, a piece of one the giants had broken free in the slight breeze above and come crashing back to earth. I was a bit startled by this and then wondered what the odds of another tree limb braking free from the dizzying heights above, and smashing my skull open were.