Redwood forests and London Bridge

We're approaching the halfway point in our4,000-mile, month-long RV trip to the West Coast. The main highlight was seeing our son in the San Francisco area for three days, but almost every day adds to the catalog of delights: petroglyphs where we never expected to see them; London Bridge in the middle of what should be nowhere; trees turned to stone; Victorian Painted Ladies; a town consisting entirely of a general store and a gas pump; thriving redwoods that were already giants when Columbus was but lust in his father's loins. Yesterday I walked in a redwood forest--actually, we're staying in an RV park that sits in the middle of one--and examined an old trunk that had fallen sometime in the distant past. Its diameter might have been seven or eight feet, and one end was hollow. I stood inside, imagining being a hiker who sought shelter from a sudden downpour--the inside of the old giant would have been perfect for a half dozen hikers. On its outside, however, the bark was covered by clover, ferns, lichen, and moss, thousands of small roots extending from the top of the mass. It's going to take a long time for Nature to wipe all traces of the tree's existence, but she is patient. She will do it.

My new card reader doesn't work, though it was fine at first, so I haven't been able to upload photos from my camera for a few days. But perhaps because Man trumps Nature (in his own mind), a highway will lead me today out of this ancient glory and north to a Radio Shack. So by the end of the day I should be able to upload more photos.

Here, at least, is London Bridge, carried stone by stone across the Pond in the 1970s and reassembled in Arizona. Oddly, it looks at home.