In the summer of 2022, my family decided to take a trip. It was going to be a 2-week long trip, we all packed up our suitcases and flew 3 hours to the great state of Oregon. It wasn't just any trip though, it was a road trip. After we got off our flight we rented a van and we were off, starting in Portland. We stayed at a lot of hotels and visited a lot of destinations, some of the best were the Japanese Gardens, Crater Lake, and the Redwood Forest. But let's focus on the Redwoods.

We journeyed through the Redwoods by first, going around the whole thing to start near the bottom at the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. This is where we hiked the Boy Scout Tree Trail, a 5.3-mile round trip that took me through some very dense and diverse redwood groves. I was amazed by the sheer size and beauty of the trees, some of them were over 300 feet tall and 20 feet thick. There was so much more nature, like ferns, huckleberry plants, and animals like deer and chipmunks. It felt like walking through a fairytale, surrounded by the wonders of nature. 

We continued our journey by heading North again to the Oregon Redwoods Trail. This was just a quiet, short 1.7-mile loop trail. We saw more of the ginormous, beautiful trees and more animals. At the end of our hike while my mom and I were waiting for my brother to finish in the restroom we were sitting on a bench snacking on granola bars. I noticed that as soon as we got food out chipmunks immediately started coming around us. This made my mom nervous, however I found it amusing.

"It'll be fine, it won't bite me," I said looking back at my mom. She just rolled her eyes.

I leaned down to try to feed a fat brown chipmunk who had run up next to the leg of our bench. He jumped back at first, but when he realized I meant no harm, he came forward to sniff the food. After a few seconds, he snatched the granola bar from my hand and shoved the whole thing into his chubby little cheeks. It made me laugh, but also had a realization. This precious moment with nature that the Redwood provided me with gave me a new sense, it made me realize how precious nature is and that I should be appreciating what's going on around me rather than focusing on the stressors going on in my head. It was so peaceful and serene there at that moment. Me and my mom just continued eating and staring at the rays of sun cast down through the leaves of the skyscraping trees.

After we left we figured it was time for some dinner, we headed back to the town our hotel was in to find someplace that was open late at night. To our surprise, there was a seafood boil restaurant/bar that was open 24 hours. My family is big fans of seafood so we decided to try it. We went in and ordered and the food was amazing. There were giant metal bowls filled to the brim with pounds of lobster, crab legs, crawdads, clams, potatoes, carrots, and every seasoning you could imagine. So, not only was the mental and physical experience of the redwood forest amazing, but the nearby towns and restaurants were lively and amazing as well.