Perspective and Scale

Almost everything we've done this trip when it comes to natural wonders has been woefully underrepresented in pictures--mountains (Rainier, Baker, Adams, Hood, St. Helens), the Pacific Ocean, the Columbia River Gorge, and now, the Redwoods.

These babies are the tallest living things in the world. There are only a few trees, however, that you can view from top to bottom because they are so close together in the groves that you can't see to the top. So the only way we can really know how big they are is to get up really close to the trunk of a tree (dare I say, hug one) and look up. And even from that perspective, there is no way to know just how big that tree is. We can't possibly take in the enormity of it all. It's big. I mean ginormous big. Like so-big-that-it's-difficult-to-take-it-in-big. But when you stand at the base...when you stand so close that you can wrap your arms around the trunk and then you look up...whew, you know it's big. I wonder what the view from the top is like.

Do you see the analogy coming? God's like that. He's big. He's so big we can't take him all in. But when we move in really close, (actually, he's moving close to us) and look up...whew, you know he's big. :)

On another note...

Cindy Pawlcyn, of Mustard Grill fame (Yountville), also has a restaurant in St. Helena--Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen. There were many good things to choose from, but we landed on these...

 Rabbit Tostada

 Mushroom Potpie

 Mission Figs with Serrano Ham and Housemade Ricotta

 Oysters

 S'Mores Pie

All really good food! We also stopped by the Thomas Keller bakery, Bouchon, and got these...

By the time we got to our hotel in Oakdale, we were tired...but not too tired to go find one of these...

And that is how we ended our day! Tomorrow, on to Yosemite!