Tree Tuesday Sequoia Style.

Tree Tuesday at Sequoia Park

This is Part #1 of a multi part Tree Tuesday series
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Edit:
Almost forgot...
Sequoia Park sits in the heart of Eureka, California. If your ever driving on the 101 through Humboldt County, it's well worth a diversion to this unique in town redwood park and zoo

Part One. The Playground

I’ll start off this series at the playground it serves as the parks main playground(there are two), the main BBQ/picnicking area. It also has a powered band stand for outdoor events, as well as bathrooms. The playground also has some unique redwood tree formations not found anywhere else in the park.

This lone sentinel marks the Southeast corner of the park.

OK, here are the unique tree formations I was talking about. They’re called Cathedral Trees
Some time back in the 1800’s a giant old growth redwood was cut leaving large stump. Next the tree(now a stump) starts putting out new growth around the base of the stump. Over the years the branches that grew out of the stump became trees in their own right creating a “cathedral” of trees ringing the old growth stump that is still there in the center. The one pictured here serves as a platform for the slide.
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Just a side note on the slide…. That is a totally wussified version of the one that was there when I was a kid… I mean its short, the down angle is so shallow the kids have to scoot themselves the last 5 feet to get to the end and gently step off onto soft wood chips….

NOW when I was a kid that slide was about 1 ½ stories tall and it had about a 60 degree down angle and when you started down it felt like you were falling out of that tree, with the little woooptido(spell check has no idea what to do with that lol) in the tummy and then you launched off the end of that thing at about 20 miles an hour into bed of rocks and broken glass, you had to hit the ground on your feet and running. Oh and if you used the right hand side you had to lean to the left at the end because the metal slide ( 20 degrees in the winter and a 350 degrees in the summer) was bent, jagged, and rusty on the right at the end and if you didn’t lean left, you had to go get a tetanus shot because you ripped your leg open on rusty metal. AND you had to wait in line for all this because every kid within miles wanted ride it till the sun went down. It was the best thing there I rode it 100's of times for years with little or no serious injury. <,< But I digress.

Also pictures are two more cathedrals and some of the other equipment.

One of my personal favorites, got this one this morning , before too many people showed up. Bandstand pictured with the tree clusters in the background.

Most images taken in the evening and the sun has moved west behind the trees so the playground is in evening shadow. There are three photos here that were taken in the morning when the playground was in full sun.

Any guesses as to what the locals call this cathedral cluster ??

Looks like a giant version of something else common to the area.

This last week I have been getting to know my new camera and how it acts under different lighting conditions etc., Most of the shots here have not been enhanced other than some lighting adjustment and a little color boost.Oh and a 1 degree tilt correction to the right O.o

Hope you enjoyed the post. Next week I'll be making my way through the forest on the way to the Duck Pond and secondary Playground.

This post and all the others in this series dedicated to the memory of Bill the Chimp, RIP buddy

Although it's been many years since you passed you are still remembered and missed, was also a treat finding you in my back yard every once in a wile . Bill got out of his enclosure every so often and my Mom must have got a call about once a month or so from the zoo checking to see if Bill was in the giant cherry tree in our back yard again. We were on a short call list as he seemed to favor 2 or 3 locations when flying the coup. He was quite the Houdini and had a taste for cherries.
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