A Walk in the Woods

Okay, my wife just pointed out that this blog title is the same as a Bill Bryson book. I wrote the title not even connecting that--it's just hidden in there subliminally, I guess.

Beth picked me up at church with the boys at the end of the afternoon to go for a walk in the woods for a little bit before getting back to church for a new young family's Bible study that's starting up.

Anyway, we headed over to Redwood Park--just a few blocks from church. We hadn't been there before. It was started during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by a couple brothers who collected tree seed from around the world. The first thing we stumbled across after leaving the play area was the most wonderful drinking fountain I've come across. It was carved like a tree stump with all sorts of fauna lurking about it (you may notice a fox peeking out of the lower left corner of the picture. There was a second drinking fountain about 20cm (just a metric guess) off the ground for dogs (and indeed most everybody else there had a dog with them).

It was a fun walk in the woods. Part of it was a redwood forest--not nearly as tall as the ones in California, since these haven't been growing as long. And we discovered that the tree I love (see a couple entries down) is a Monkey Puzzle Tree. It's native to Chile, but apparently fairly common in coastal BC (as well as in England). It seems a lot of people are fond of its imaginative appearance. Another mystery solved. And who would have guessed a monkey puzzle tree (do a little search online for the story behind the nomenclature).