Sunday, June 28, 2009

A Drive Down the Coast and Through the Redwoods

Yesterday was sunny and hot, a perfect day to go to the beach and drive down the coast! We packed some lunch, and the Olympus camera that we found, and went over the bay towards Half Moon Bay, which is just south of San Francisco and on the ocean. But before we could get close, there was a major traffic jam, so we ended up getting onto I-280 and driving south until Route 7 to Woodside. There we took Route 84, aka La Honda Rd to the small city of La Honda, which is situated in the redwoods. This was the start of our ride through the redwoods.




There are many small winding roads (which aren't shown on the Google Map above) through the mountains between the San Jose area and Santa Cruz through the Santa Cruz Mountains. The mountains aren't so high, at most ~2,000 ft, but they are covered with old and second growth redwoods. Its fun to drive past the many state parks and open space reserves that are in the area.

Beach Near Davenport
The beach we had lunch at near the city of Davenport.


We headed to the beach as our first destination, where we had a picnic. We stopped at a beach just past the Ano Nuevo State Reserve, where the elephant seals live, and had lunch. It was so warm, we didn't need a wind-coat. Next we drove back into the redwoods to go hiking in Butano State Park. We hiked through oaks and berry patches, and finally into a pine forest and further through a redwood forest deep in a canyon with a small stream running through it. There was a campground we passed through with lots of camper making fires. Then we drove out of the park and down more winding roads, Bonny Doon Rd and Route 236, which were neat! Route 236 went right through Big Basin Redwoods State Park, where we stopped at the visitor center. They had huge blown-up maps of the area made for hiking, and we discovered that there was a trail which went in and between many of the state parks, such as Portola, Butano, Big Basin, and Castle Rock. There are also back-country campsites for through hikers. One day we will do the multi-day hike!

Castle Rock State Park at Sunset
Castle Rock State Park at Sunset


As it was getting dark, we drove back towards home, driving past Castle Rock State Park of Route 9 and then continued down Skyline Blvd (Hwy 35) back to Hwy 92 and over the bay. The picture above is looking over the park. All of the darker mountains in the background are forested with redwoods.

Since we bought our digital SLR Canon camera, we haven't been able to take short videos because the camera doesn't have that feature. The Olympus camera which we found kinda sucks (photo quality and zoom) but it was free and it takes videos, so we tried making one at the beach. This is the first time I am posting a video clip on the blog, so here it goes:


1 comments:

Mom said...

You had a beautiful day. wish I would be able to see some of the areas you have visited.

Don't forget--If you can get a small corpse plant for your aunt that would be good.