Coastal Drive and Flint Ridge Trail

This day's adventure was to drive the Coastal Drive and walk some of the Flint Ridge Trail. 

Our first stop on the drive was to see the south end of the former bridge spanning the Klamath River.  Read below to see how it was destroyed in 1964.

The Klamath River

The salmon are running so they are being caught as they swim upstream.

So as we continued up the road, we pulled over for this pickup to pass us.  Suddenly he swung the pickup around to go back the way he came.

Then we started seeing lots of vehicles along the road and finally figured out the owners were probably out fishing salmon at the mouth of the river.

The parked cars just kept going....

and going for a few miles.

We came to an overlook where we could see the sand bar lined with fishermen and women.

The river made a sand bar at the mouth.  It then runs left between the banks for quite a while..

before finding it's way out to the ocean.  Seals gathered at the mouth to get salmon and birds hovered overhead for the scraps.

Back up the river a distance all the fishing was being done from boats.

They do this in Alaska too.

Nolan heard one guy say they could only fish while the sand bar was exposed.  The tide would rise and the sand bar would be covered by water.

Another viewpoint further up the road.

The road turned in to a single-lane gravel road.

Sign at the High Bluff overlook

View from High Bluff overlook

There was another trail leading off from the High Bluff Overlook parking area so we took it.  Another fabulous view.

Wished we were a little closer to where the waves were crashing into the rocks but Nolan got this great photo.

Ok, I can look at this view for hours.  There were seal swimming too.

Rock on the top of the bluff.  Looks like it is just precisely balanced in place.

Loved these large grass plumes

The rocks rose higher in some places.

Now for the walking part of our day.

I know we didn't even make it half way.  We were both feeling sluggish so we only walked for 37 minutes going up but came down in 32 minutes.

 

The first part of the trail was just around this pond.

Oh, it's so hard to see in this photo but there is a branch going between these two trees.  They are growing around it.

We crossed over two bridges.

This dead tree was huge!

It was a good home to ferns.

The next large dead tree was split up the trunk.

A view up the trunk.

I just thought the sun through the branches was beautiful.

I don't know if this fern was deformed or just one I had never seen before.  It looked like it was coming out where the rest of the sword fern came out of the ground.

This 10' tall dead tree stump had four large trees growing out of it.  It was huge!