Another Redwood Weekend

I camped again at Big Basin Redwoods State Park on October 1st and 2nd. I was going to write a long John Muir-ish posting about this, full of spiritual and philosophical reflections on the Redwood trees. If you have followed my blog for a while (probably only my mom has done this) then you probably know that I have a love for the old-growth groves of the Coast Redwoods which borders on idolatry.

However, for two weeks now other things on my to-do list have kept me from writing a long reflective post. So, in the interest of just getting it done, I will opt instead for something closer to the Joe Friday style. (“Just the facts.”)

I had made my reservation at Big Basin a couple of weeks before. (My first choice, the Butano State Park campground, also noted for its old-growth Redwoods, had already been booked up.) During the last week in September, I learned that my best friends in California, Frank and Nicole, could use some help moving. They need to move from their apartment to a house to accommodate a coming increase in their family size. I agreed to spend Saturday afternoon helping to move boxes for them in my Volvo wagon.

Since I now had nothing particular to do on Saturday morning, I drove over to the Pacific side of San Mateo County for some shoreline birding. A point of land at the north end of Half Moon Bay, called Pillar Point, is considered one of the best spots for birding in California. Fog limited visibility rather severely, but I still had a good time and tallied up a long list of bird species there. The most exciting find was a Wandering Tattler, a fairly uncommon bird.

That afternoon Frank and I loaded up boxes in his car and mine and made three trips from their apartment in San Mateo to their house in San Carlos. After we had gotten all the boxes moved, we had an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant in San Mateo which neither of us had tried before. Then I put a minimal load of my camping gear in my car and headed down to Big Basin. I reached the park, signed in at the campground, and pitched my tent just before nightfall.

One nice thing about camping at a great state park in the fall is that night falls fairly early, and then you have the hiking trails pretty much to yourself. After my camp site was all set up, I went hiking from about 7:00 PM to about 11:30 PM. Unlike my previous camping trip to Big Basin, this time I had two good flashlights with fresh batteries in my backpack. I was looking for owls mostly, and I found three Northern Saw-whet Owls (aren't they cute?) and a Western Screech-owl before the night was over.

The worst thing about the night at the park is that some @#$!& had apparently set up a boom box somewhere in the park and all night long was blasting the kind of noise which I hate to dignify with the name of “music”. (When I read The Lord of the Rings, I always imagine the orcs playing this kind of “music”.)

After a night of this kind of “entertainment”, it was pretty hard to get up early the next morning, so I slept in until almost seven. Then I got up and made myself a breakfast of a pancake and a couple cups of coffee. (Real coffee, not instant. What a wonderful invention for camping the French press is!) After this I hiked until about noon, seeing plenty of Winter Wrens, Acorn Woodpeckers, and Townsend’s Warblers.

In the afternoon, I drove down to the seashore, and then drove up on Highway 1, along the coasts of Santa Cruz and San Mateo Counties, stopping at various spots for some shoreline birding. At the south end of Big Basin Redwoods State Park, I stopped at the Rancho del Oso Nature Center. This is a little place, and apparently put together on a tight budget, but it was very nicely done and the tiny staff was wonderfully eager to be of service. I enjoyed talking to the friendly (and pretty) naturalist until closing time and then I hit the road again.