Santa Cruz Waterfall

Last weekend I drove up to Big Basin to see a waterfall. Even though I only had three hours, I didn't *drive* to the waterfall that you can drive to--I walked to it.

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Beginning at the parking lot at Headquarters, I picked up the Sequoia Trail and walked to Sempervirens Falls. The trail was the usual walk-through-the-redwoods. No elevation to speak of, but this park has lots of interesting stumps and a wide variety of other trees and shrubs that feels different from the redwood forest I know best, at UCSC.

The Falls weren't exactly as I expected.



I expected to find people; I didn't expect to find a sort of people pen at the bottom of some wooden steps. But that's what we get when we love something to death.

I played with the settings on my camera to get this sort of retro-postcard look:



...and a B/W:



I returned to the parking lot via the "Shadowbrook Trail" which I recommend over the Sequoia Trail. As its name implies, most of the walk is in the shade along one of two creeks. Again, it's mostly flat.


One of my favorite features of a redwood forest are the fairly common "still-lifes" of extremely violent events. My favorite is the VW bug stuck up in some trees high above the railroad track under Highway 9 on the way to Felton. But this one of a fallen redwood is my new second favorite.