biggest god damn trees i've ever seen

Yesterday we left Santa Rosa and cruised up the 101 through Healdsburg (Bear Republic Brewery) and on up to Eureka (Lost Coast, Mad River and Eel River breweries).  A small wine making/tasting community, Healdsburg is in Sonoma County, and it's surrounds include rolling hills, cyprus trees, and vineyards.  Beautiful!

And then somebody flipped the switch.

We went through a little town called Willits - the gateway to the redwoods - and suddenly we were in the land of giants.  There's a side road off of hwy 101 that's a scenic route through about 10 groves of redwoods called Avenue of the Giants.  Amazing.  And I'll get to the pictures, but first want to drop a little knowledge on you.

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, there used to be redwoods everywhere.  Everywhere.  Then the ice age happened.  As the waters receded, only a stretch along the northwest coast of the US, a small bit in the Sierras, and an even smaller bit in China now host these amazing trees.  (Actually redwoods can grow almost anywhere, but nowhere other than these three places do they attain their giant stature.)  Redwoods average eight feet to as much as 20 feet in diameter, and some are 379 feet tall - that's taller than the Statue of Liberty from base of the pedestal to the tip of the torch.  Shit! that's tall.  Some redwoods are larger around and through than a Greyhound bus.  Some redwoods standing today were around well over 2,000 years ago.  Redwoods are likely the largest living thing on earth (besides Donald Trump's hair).  Redwoods have a shallow root system that spreads out for some distance but does not go very deep. With their incredible height, this opens them up to being blown down by strong winds. By growing in a grove the redwoods protect each other from the wind.  They don't get water from their roots, their needles soak it up from fog and rain.  They don't die when they fall over, they continue to grow - sometimes starting whole new trees from their limbs.  They are not like any trees we know.  

Here's the base of a fallen tree.  It's much taller than I am.

Here's a stump...I'm standing about six feet away from it to fit it all in my viewfinder.

Giants.

John Steinbeck wrote about the redwood, "The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time."

I'm looking forward to the Sierras and my next grove of redwoods.