If I had to pick a theme for 2019, it could easily be Exploring California!  You may recall I visited Southern California earlier this year and I was excited to share some of my adventures with you.  More recently, I visited Northern California for the first time and I am even more excited to share some of my more current California adventures!

The Northern part of the glorious state of California sure has some super cool places to visit!  One of these is the Big Basin Redwoods State Park and I had the opportunity to visit it with my two favorite people!  Established in 1902, Big Basin is California’s oldest state park and is home to the largest span of old-growth Redwoods south of San Francisco.

Redwood trees are such an amazing part of nature.  The trail we walked in the park passed by some of the biggest redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  The tallest tree in Big Basin was 329 feet – until the top broke off in a storm reducing its height to 293 feet – still tall by any standard!

Not only are the trees unreal in height, but how crazy is it to think a tree is 2,000 years old!  Awesome!

In addition to witnessing these redwood beauties, we were determined to witness a banana slug in its natural environment.  This bright yellow slug is native to the forest floors along North America’s Pacific coastal coniferous rainforest belt (including redwood forests) which stretches from southeastern Alaska to Santa Cruz, California.

As luck would have it – success!  We spotted one on our way out of the park!

Thanks for stopping by!  Have an awesome week!

Remember to take pleasure in simple things, Jackie