Close your eyes and imagine cool blue light shining through tree leaves and leaving indistinguishable shadows on a dense forest floor. These images sprung to life for me during an hour hike around the Big Basin Redwoods. Big Basin Redwoods State Park is a little treasure cove of tall Redwood trees, about 45 minutes from where I live in Mountain View. It was an amazing surprise to see I could drive less than an hour and reach such scenic beauty in Boulder Creek. Even the drive to the state park was beautiful. We passed through Saratoga and ended up in the Santa Cruz mountains. The windy path forced us to keep to an honest speed limit of 30-45 miles/hour. But that made the view all the better. We arrived in the early afternoon to the camping headquarters but didn’t have much time to look around before heading down to Santa Cruz. The area looked wonderful for camping so I must go back soon for a weekend camp and hike. P and I chose to take the loop that would show us the oldest trees in this particular forest. So we met the father (the tallest tree) and mother of the forest (the widest tree). P is already very tall. And you can see just how the forest dwarfs him. One nice thing is I get to hide in little cracks and crevices because I’m so small in comparison to the trees. They make very adorable forts for children who can get lost in the intricate patterns laid out by broken trees, many of which have fallen during storms or from diseases and old age. And perfect for a game of hide and seek!

Peek-a-boo!!

I also felt very short next to these trees! I really liked the eerie blue light that often flooded the trees. It gave a strange sense of peace and other-worldliness. The cool thing about redwood trees are they are some of the biggest trees in the world and I believe the tallest. Big Basin was a very beautiful forest. Can’t wait to come back for some nature walks. With more appropriate clothing of course. P.S And yes Santa is red, tall and round in the middle too. But we’ll have to wait for the appropriate season for a Santa post 🙂