Fran and I agreed that we had to go back to the Redwoods north of San Francisco when we were there a couple of weeks ago. The last time we were there, we bought her mom, who has a severe case of the "Green Thumb", a redwood seedling. So, maybe 2000 years from now these trees will be considered indigenous to Texas.
The light was gorgeous, the weather was thankfully 40 degrees cooler than when we left home, so the walk in the woods was very enjoyable. Being among these trees makes me feel very peaceful.
I'm not sure why, but there were about four people with New York accents who were incapable of speaking at regular conversational levels. They had the same decibel level as a jet plane at takeoff, which was causing advancing groups of birds to take flight in fear. They were screaming to each other about things they needed to do when they got back from vacation--it seemed to be sacrilege. Another woman walked by chatting mindlessly on her cellphone. We just turned to each other and shrugged.
I took about 50 or so pictures, and then the battery ran out in the camera. There's a ring of huge trees called Cathedral Grove, which will, I suppose, remain undocumented here. As we walked back to the entrance, we spotted a black tailed deer munching lichens from a fallen log. I looked at Fran, then at the camera bag, and then just enjoyed watching the deer. He stood there for several minutes, seeing the people but apparently not worried. Then, he wandered slowly back into the woods.
Last time, we were the last people on the bus back to San Francisco. We lollygagged in with two steaming cups of hot chocolate and received glares from the out-of-breath people who didn't stop at the gift shop. This time, we were determined not to receive such daggers, so we decided to forego the extra long hiking trail and turned back with an hour to spare. We did a little shopping, decided to go for hot chocolate again since we could with the chilly temperatures, then lollygagged back to the bus, where we were again the last ones on with hot chocolate and glares and daggers and...etc etc.
As the guide said "The difference between a tourist and a hitchhiker is about one minute."
We were walking down the boardwalk, I spotted a camera shop and we went inside and asked if they would mind charging our battery for us since we didn't have the charger on our vacation. Since it was Fran and not me, and since it was a guy, he smiled and agreed. I stood by the front entrance and was thoroughly checked over by a bald, burly Russian man who glared at me with his huge hamhock arms crossed.
I didn't realize what a treasure I had in the camera until we were back home.
2 comments:
Ha ha! I'm laughing my A** off. Don't know if you caught me before harrassing Stormfilled about "whilst".
Lollygagging is such a ridiculous word that using it is pretty much of a mockery of oneself, so I had to go there...
I'll try to work it in more often, just for you ;).
Regarding this photo--unbelievably, the rays of light were actually visible in the forest as we walked through--it was overwhelmingly beautiful--sometimes I think the word "awesome" is overused, but it fits here...
Thank you for the kind comments.
Oh, and by the way, to they have the term "gerrymandering" in the UK? For some reason, I thought it was a uniquely American term...
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