Location: Brookings, Oregon, USA

Alex, Katisse and I woke up early this morning, planning on driving as far as we could possibly get before dark. We stopped at Stanford for some coffee, breakfast and a quick sneak peek of Alex’s beautiful old campus, before setting out northbound. A few days ago Vegas was the biggest city I had ever driven in, now it’s San Francisco! I even drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, smiling almost the whole way (and also white knuckling the steering wheel a little bit).

We slowly left California behind, getting glimpses of the coastline through the forest and coming ever closer to a place that’s been extremely high on my bucket list for many years: Redwood National Park! It was such a terrible idea to have me be the driver today because I was so awe struck and distracted looking at all the beautiful trees and stopping every few kilometres to run up to them. Each one seemed bigger and more beautiful than the last.

We walked along a trail though the Humboldt Redwoods, necks angled upwards at all times except when we were too busy staring at the width of the trunks. Every single corner we rounded showed us new and beautiful twisted trees. Some so deformed they looked like sculptures, others so large they had other smaller trees growing directly from their trunks, and some with spaces so big you could stand inside them!

It was magical.

It seemed to be exactly the kind of forest you’d expect to see in a fairytale, or as wedding photo backdrops, or in paintings. I wanted desperately to stay longer, but alas we had to keep moving.

The timing couldn’t have been better, as we hopped back in the car the sun began to set and we hit the section of road that runs all the way north along the coastline. Red and pink colours shot out across the ocean view and faded as we made our way into Brookings to stay for the night.

We stopped for some Thai food that rivalled that in Skagway (almost sacrilegious to say so, but true) before crashing hard at the hotel. Over the last few days we’ve been recapping some of the trip and discussing what we’ve seen…

So far I think I can say that seeing the redwoods has been my favourite part. I could have spent days walking around and camping in those trees.

Maybe one day I’ll get to!

Sav