A Walk in Armstrong Redwoods State Park with Canadian Friends and a Paddle Too

Tuesday October 27, 2015 Armstrong Woods, Guerneville CA.

Marty and Patti were coming by with some of our Canadian friends, Denis and Sue, for a visit this morning. I thought it would be a good idea to take them up to my redwood state park which is right next to my house. I spent a lot of time growing up in it, before it was so popular. It’s called Armstrong Redwoods State Park. The State got that piece and my great grandfather got another piece of Armstrong’s Ranch, that our family still owns today. My great grandfather purchased a piece of it from Armstrong around 1900. I really think we got the best piece, but they are both real nice places. I spent a good deal of time in the park as I grew up and have walked over most of it many times.

Tried to explain the redwoods

When I was in the Army on the East coast, in Maryland, back in 1966, I tried to explain the big trees to the guys back there, but it was hopeless. I told them they had nothing but toothpick trees. :O) They are just something you have to experience. These days, that always reminds me of the tree huggers, David and Sherry from the blog I read,  http://directionofourdreams.blogspot.com/   .

They arrived about eleven AM and we drove the short distance up to the park and hit the trail. We could have walked up to it, but Patti just had a knee operation not long along and Marty is getting a bit older, so I took it easy on them. :O)

As we passed by the entrance kiosk, a ranger shouted out, do you need a map. I just laughed and said no thanks.

Here’s the gang as we are just starting up the trail.

Continuing up the trail and shooting the bull some too.

Icicle tree

We turned off the main trail here at the icicle tree which is in the background.

From there we crossed over headed to the Colonel Armstrong tree along this trail

All of the town of Guerneville and the valley I live in, looked like this before they logged it in the late 1800’s, just after the  gold rush period which was what brought all the settlers west at that time.

Armstrong’s tree

Here’s Denis checking out the Colonel’s tree.

We stopped at the Colonel’s tree for a much needed break.

After a good break, we headed on back and they took off for Bodega Bay to have some lunch and do some sight seeing.

Off to Kayak

I headed on down to Jenner to kayak for the day. I put my boat in and paddled on over to the upper end of Penny Island where I ran into Ray under the trees there.

We sat and shot the bull there for a bit, then headed on up the river at a very slow pace, going by this gang of cormorants. My best harbor seal is resting there in the background.

This is likely the friendliest harbor seal of them all. So far, I haven’t named him or her? It always pops up near me when I’m on the river. It’s also one of the harbor seals that spends most of it’s time in the river and not with the other seals down by the river’s mouth.

We worked our way up to Eagle’s Landing where the wind picked up a couple notches and then we  crossed over the river to the other side to see what birds where along the shore there. Not too many today, with the weather the way it was, most of the birds just fly away to a nicer spot.  Some rain is supposed to come in.

I saw these mallard ducks hunkered down and went on by them. The wind picked up some more as we pasted on by, which always makes taking pictures a bit more difficult because of the waves.

We went by these coots and a lot more of them too which scooted away out of our path.

Call it a day

The day was looking a bit on the gloomy side, so I decided to head in to the boat ramp with Ray and cut the day short.

Even the great blue heron was hunkered down, just taking it easy in this spot.

It wasn’t far to the boat ramp from there where we pulled in and took our boats out of the water and went on home for the day.

Expecting rain

At home, I put a few things away expecting it to rain a bit tonight and then hit the coach for a much needed nap as I didn’t sleep well last night as I seem to have gotten into some corn stuff during dinner last night which makes me itch all over. Yuck. :O)

It was still a nice day.