Humboldt State Park, Califonia

I don’t know if my parents were trying to get out of a three hour drive by saying Humboldt was pretty much the same as Redwood National Park. If so it didn’t work. I’m not saying Humboldt wasn’t nice, but it wasn’t the same as Redwood and I really wanted to go to Redwood.

When we got into Humboldt it was late and drizzly. We set up the camper and went on a mile long walk on a loop through the forest.  We saw a lot of big trees and huge burls, (those weird lumpy things that grow on the side of the tree).  We learned from interpretive signs that burls were full of clones of the tree.  If the tree gets damaged the burl sprouts hundreds of new tree saplings, so eventually one or two of the saplings will become trees. Sometimes several trees grow and the tree they came off of dies and rots. When the mother tree is gone there is a ring of trees called a fairy circle.  Another thing we learned about was called a goose pen. A goose pen happens when a fire burns partway through a tree and leaves a burned out alcove in the tree.  These goose pens can range from a few inches across to big enough to camp in.