While my brother was in town, we took a day trip to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It’s about an hour from our house, the last half on winding roads up into the Santa Cruz mountains. Big Basin has some of the largest old-growth redwood trees in this part of California, which was our primary motivation for choosing this park.
Two of the largest trees, the “mother of the forest” and the “father of the forest” are 15 feet in diameter and almost 300 feet tall!
Besides those two huge redwoods, there were many, many more huge redwoods. After a while, these trees started to look normal!
The hike itself was also really nice – the park is very wooded so we were in the shade most of the day, and had a nice 3 mile loop to hike. There are a lot more trails through the park, including a longer hike out to Berry Creek Falls that Ryder and I are eyeing for a time when we’re feeling adventerous.
More pictures here.