Fishing Was A Bust

First let me note that since Howard (Windknots) turned 65 last month and Mel (Pondstalker) is a year or two or more younger, the fact that I turned 68 today makes me the Senior Geezer here in Blogdom.  
So, as Senior Geezer, I'm going to tell you about our July trip in the Clipper that we took this week.

Our aim was to camp at a place called Hendy Woods State Park in the little town of Philo, California. The drive took us 4 1/2 hours and covered about 220 miles, but the park is well worth it. Hendy Woods is one of the parks that protect the "Old Growth" Redwoods. By "Old Growth", I'm talking about trees that might be as old as 2000 years.

The spot we reserved was one designated for tents (I'm not sure why Reserve America took our reservation based for that) and our trailer would have fit, but we would never have been able to level it. So we went back to the check-in and the girl assigned us to their "emergency" spot which was spectacular to say the least. Pictures in tomorrows post.

Once we got settled, I wanted to run over to the Navarro River and wet a line. I brought "3" and "6" and my whole fly box. You can't fish in the park, but you can fish down stream from the Philo-Greenwood Bridge. The DFW lists it as:
Only artificial lures with barbless hooks may be used.

4 hatchery trout or hatchery

steelhead** in possession. 

Only  problem is that there aren't any Steelhead this time of the year and I couldn't find the last time they stocked the river. Fact is, there just isn't any fish in the river. So much for fishing.  

Continuing our trip, the park is divided into two areas, the Big Hendy Grove and the Little Hendy Grove. Saturday morning we toured the Big Hendy Grove. There are several paths to take, so we took the upper loop and the back loop. You kind of went up the left side, across the bottom of upper loop, around the right side and back across the back loop, then back down to your car. About a two mile walk, but mostly level, all shaded and full of sights to see.   

So follow along, this is the beginning of the trail.

Took this shot because of how deep green the back trees were.

Veer to the right for the Upper Loop.

Tall Redwoods

Clover, lots and lots of Clover

Continuing on the Upper Loop.

They say that the stretch of your arms is the same as your height. I'm 6' 3" so you can see how big this tree is.

Maybe 8 or 9 feet wide.

The wife is a bit smaller than I am, but a lot cuter.

One BIG problem is poachers stealing the Burl's from Redwood trees for furniture and such. This was a unique one.

Looks kind of like a....never mind.

We came across several benches for to you to rest on and they were all dedicated to someone like this one in the memory of Miss Gray Hamilton. If you look closely, she was only 20 when she died in 1920.

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Some of the trees have these huge holes in them. I'll have some more pictures to show you tomorrow, but here's one of them.

BIG hole

 There were a couple places that looked like this.

It looked like a whole bunch of little redwood trees.

Another dedicated bench

Tomorrow I'll do another post with more pictures so Y'all come back, now.