They looked almost polk-a-dotted. I kept trying to snap a picture while I was driving. It’s a problem when all the best views of the hills are in fleeting glimpses from the tops of a rise in the road. Unwilling to actually stop and take a good picture (that and any place to pull over had no view), I kept trying to grab a shot. I took many pictures of blurred guardrails and streaks of green. Obviously I eventually succeeded – not great but you can see the polk-a-dot hills. It took me a day to get to the coast. I went from upper 90s hot, hot, hot to foggy misty and in a relative sense – freezing. What is it about the CA coast in the summer that it is perpetually foggy? I wonder if it’s like this in the winter. I have a hunch it’s not…so perhaps I’ll have to come back and check it out.
The next stop up the coast was Redwoods National Park…and again it was foggy. But then I suppose it is always foggy there. It is what helps the trees grow so big or at least that is what the video at the visitor’s center said. On days I’ve been going into national parks, I’ve been trying to get up early. I got to the Redwoods about 8:45am. Two things make that a great decision – one I beat the hoards. 
Waiting in lines and driving in traffic is not my idea of nature viewing. Second, I get to see things like this – the sun beginning to break through the early morning fog. I went a little picture happy. You can feel like a great photographer when there’s no bad scene in view and the misty fog adds a sense of the dramatic to everything. I had a hard time deciding what picture(s) to post. 
I took few short hikes while in the Redwoods. One hike was up to this small falls –Trillium Falls. I had my first sense, on that hike that I was getting close to the northwest when I spotted a banana slug. For those who have never seen one, they’re long, thick, gelatinous things that happen to be bright yellow. My communing with wild animals continued when I spotted these elk just off the road. 
Boy are they big up close – good thing they seemed completely unconcerned by me. Which was unlike the group of five mountain goats that would not get off the road for me in Zion. Those goats turned their heads toward me, about six feet from my car, and gave me a nasty look, if that’s possible. These elk were slightly farther away and much nicer. From the Redwoods, I crossed the Oregon border and am now officially in the northwest.
A fact I kind of liked when I flicked on the TV last night and the Mariner’s game was playing. I am in Ashland, OR – a very quaint town in southern Oregon. It’s home to the Oregon Shakespeare festival. And as one of the last stops on the trip where I will be alone, I’m living it up. This morning I went to see if I could get tickets to a play for tonight. Last night, they told me everything was sold out, but I thought I’d try again. I met this very nice woman whose friend wasn’t going to be able make it. So I bought her extra ticket, front row center, to see Taming of the Shrew in the outside Elizabethan replica of the Globe Theatre. As my last solo stop things are working out nicely.
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