Portola Redwoods State Park (San Mateo County)

On Saturday we took a drive to Portola Redwoods State Park, which is in the mountains between Santa Cruz and San Jose. It took us two hours to get there. Much of it was along narrow and winding roads. I felt sick most of the way but thankfully I felt worse than any of the kids. I’m hoping they don’t inherit the motion-sickness gene from me.

We had planned on starting out on the Sequoia Nature Trail. I was looking forward to seeing if the waterfall had water in it. I really want to see a waterfall. Unfortunately, I failed to notice in the hiking book that the seasonal bridge is taken out in the winter.

We turned around and headed back to the visitor center. And lucky us! There was a hiking tour group forming and we talked with the guide about what trail we should take. She suggested we take the Old Tree Trail. So off we went.

This trail turned out to be perfect for us. It was only about a mile round trip. Although we found so many reasons to stop on the way to the big tree that it probably took us an hour.

Caleb did a great job of finding mushrooms that we’ve never seen before…

Charlotte found the world’s tiniest mushroom…

Ana found a bunch of banana slugs. I was so excited about this! I had only seen a banana slug one other time in my life and that was when I was about 13. We saw six that day!

I thought this fallen redwood was amazing… and sad. It’s a very different perspective to see how long it is laying on the ground versus how tall it is reaching up to the sky.

Here are the kids in front of the 1,200 year old Big Tree. The biggest tree in the park.

There was a huge fallen tree. The kids had fun