Water and rocks may be where my heart is, but Tito loves giant trees, so a trip along the 101 Coastal highway would not be complete without a visit to see the giant redwood forests.

We stopped at the roadside attraction ‘Trees of Mystery’ with its giant Paul Bunyan statue and bizarre tree formations, then drove through the ‘Avenue of Giants’ alternative route that follows the 101.

We even made a little diversion to the tree that you can actually drive through, and saw the world’s biggest cathedral tree (trees that grow together as one from the stump of a fallen tree).

To stand beside these trees, and to touch them, to witness the sheer mass of them, is truly an awesome and profoundly spiritual experience.

This is the root system of a fallen tree that is 3000 years old!

Here’s a quote from the “Trees of Mystery” website:

To someone who has never seen one, a Redwood tree must seem to be something from a tall tale. Averaging eight feet to as much as twenty feet in diameter, and some as tall as three hundred and seventy five feet. That is a tree taller than the Statue of Liberty, from base of the pedestal to the tip of the torch. A tree larger around and through than a Greyhound bus. Absolutely the largest living thing on earth. A typical Redwood forest contains more biomass per square foot than ANY other area on earth, and that includes the Amazonian rain forests.