Roadtrip life: Crater Lake National Park, Redwood National Park

Follow the adventure of your dreams!

We started our journey in Western Canada, crossed the border to the US, travelled the Pacific Northwest, and yes, finally, we've made it down to Cali! Both of us have been California dreaming for like 9 months (that this visit needs to happen was planned well ahead) and we were so close now! But first, we did a little detour to visit our first American National Park (NP), Crater Lake NP! Being fed up with cities already, we very much welcomed this adventure into nature. It was like a 600km detour, so this better be good! 

Crater Lake

And WOW.

No dissappointment here. So pretty. So incredibly pretty!! A former volcano, and in its old crater a lake has formed. The color was the bluest of blue and you can drive all around this beauty (about 67km).
Obviously we were sharing this pretty view with an incredible amount of tourists, something that took some time getting used to. In the end, we were tourists as well, but you can be a tourist, or you can try a little more and don't act like stupid dumbasses from backcountry wherever. A little respect, everyone!

The Pinnacles

We took another detour to see the Pinnacles which where advertised in the brochure you get when entering the NP. Some more evidence that this, indeed has been an active volcano at some point. Very impressive, and for me, who never has been close to any volvano, active or not, specifically awe-inspiring.

And then: CALIFORNIA!!

Just entering California coming down Highway 101 from the North, you are going to drive through the Redwood forest. Redwood trees, giants of the nature!
For those who don't know: I studied Biology (and Krissy as well) and although I am not particularly interested in botany, this was great. We talked about these wonders of the nature in lectures but it's different to finally see the real thing!

Huge, huge, HUGE

You could literally hide IN the tree.

And you just find again how small and insiginifcant you actually are

There's trees growing on trees. How cool is that?

You drive right through this dense forrest. We stopped a couple of times and did a little exploring. Climbing onto those huge trunks can be a little mission! There's alway time to fool around a little ;D The inner child will never die... ALSO we found a (cheap!) campsite in the Redwood Forrest. It was an amazing experience to camp underneath the gentle giants. Furthermore, our campground neighbours were a friendly couple traveling on motorcycles from no other place then Calgary, Alberta, Canada. What a small world. We enjoyed great conversations with these lovely people! (You can't say that about a lot of campgrounds we stayed on)

First glimpses of California beaches :)

Why this place was called Elk Meadows... I don't know ;)

Unforutnately I can't remember the name of this tiny town, but it did have a very pretty view!

 The next night in California we spent in Eureka, a bit of a bigger beach town because we were hoping to find a garage. By this time, our car was making very weird squeeching (whatever the proper word for that is). And yes, we did forget that it was actually Sunday. Even in America no auto garage is open Sundays. So we had to take the risk and drive some more the next day as we had an Airb'n'b booked in San Francisco. We had to be there in 2 days time and it was still quite a drive.

Dead on Sundays...

... we took a littel stroll around anyway.