THE REDWOODS - A PLACE FULL OF WONDER!

Jaycie’s Bunny Hoppin’ News: Everything I learned and saw in the Redwoods!

By: Jaycie Lillie, 5/19/23 – 5/21/23

We saw a Bunny hopping in our campground!

We also saw many other creatures. Did you know redwoods clone themselves? And banana slugs are huge? Or that some ferns are edible? And candles are toxic? Ok that’s a lot and you probably didn’t know any of it. Don’t worry about toxic candles… that is just something I researched.

But YES! Redwoods clone themselves!! Crazy!! Most of the time the seeds, which are like tiny pinecones, don’t start new trees. The trees start new trees! Say a tree is growing high and strong, then it started a shoot from the side and now it grew into two trees with one trunk! That is what it means by cloning. It is hard to tell the age of the trees because of it. The tree could be 30 years old but the roots much older!

Banana slugs are huge! Well not all of them. Like all animals they start small and grow big! Here's a smaller one:

And we also saw some huge ones!!

I mentioned some ferns are edible. Yes, I looked that up. I am making a survival card game and that was a fun fact. Of course, I won the game because I know all the answers but...that’s beside the point! There were 8 different types of ferns in the Redwoods! Here some photos we took of some of them:

We learned that Stellar’s Jay birds do not have blue feathers. But instead, they are iridescent, and the sun reflects in a way that makes them appear blue. A ranger told us that!

We saw some huge slugs, but the snails were big too! 🐌 (pic)

One Banana Slug was in the path, so we moved it to the side. Operation "Save the Slug" was a success!

I also enjoyed seeing lots of different types of mushrooms! I took so many photos, I’m going to have to start a Mushroom journal!

We also saw Roosevelt Elk in the Elk Meadow:

We had a lot of fun in the redwood forest and our campground. S'mores were yummy too!

Jett’s Wild Flight: Starfish, Slugs, & S’mores!

By: Jett Lillie, 5/20/23

We first headed to the Crescent City Harbor to see the lighthouse, but realized they weren’t open until 10am (on most days). So, we explored the Jetty and looked at all the tide pools.

In those tide pools we saw TONS of starfish! We had never seen that many starfish in one place before!

Once we had killed some time, we headed over to the lighthouse. At high tide you can’t get to the lighthouse because it’s completely surrounded by water. But the tide was low enough at 10am we could walk over.

Once we got there, we took lots of pictures and then realized they were closed today. This was only 1 of 5 days all month that they were closed. We still looked around at the rocky coastline and flowers. And then headed back to the truck.

We then drove to the Hiouchi Visitor Center which thankfully was open! Jaycie and I took the oath and earned Jr Ranger badge #114.

There we got to hold a giant Roosevelt Elk antler that up to our head to get a taste of how strong Elk’s necks have to be. It was at least 20 pounds – just one antler!

Then, we headed back to the RV for grilled cheese lunch. Yum! After lunch, we met up with Ranger Kyle (again) at Stout Grove.

He led us on a hike through Stout Grove where we learned about the humongous Redwood trees and their life cycle.

We learned that Redwood trees are very resistant to fires.

A Redwood tree can actually heal itself from fires by creating burls. And some Redwoods can live hundreds of years even hollowed out. I climbed inside one living Redwood tree that was hollow for a long ways up. I could stand up inside the tree! Here I am climbing out of the tree.

We also learned that once a Redwood tree has fallen over and its roots pop up out of the ground, other plants can grow on the fallen log and roots which create its own little ecosystem. They call these fallen logs nursery logs.

At 10 years moss starts growing. You can see the Moss rings on these logs.

After 20 years ferns, flowers, and even other trees start growing out of the log. And after 30 years mushrooms can start growing.

We saw one banana slug at the end with dark spots. Ranger Kyle said, “I guess that one is Ripe!” Ha ha!

We then drove to Mill Creek to hike another trail through Titan Grove. To get to Titan Grove, we walked through a tunnel like jungle trail where we saw more banana slugs.