How do you find something special for a birthday, when every day is special?

It's hard to find a down-side of traveling full-time. We are out exploring and finding fun things to do on a daily basis. But it really is a difficult thing to find something special to celebrate a special day. The other complicating factor is we're usually not sure where we will be on a specific day. So we found ourselves wandering around Redwood National Park on Mark's birthday.

We started the day as we usually do on birthdays--eating dessert first. Nothing says breakfast-of-champions quite like chocolate chip cookie dough cheese cake. After our nutritious breakfast, we were all sugared up. So we headed down the road, where we found a happy-birthday herd of almost 50 elk in the meadow.

This was a female herd of Roosevelt Elk. We met the bachelors on our first day, so it was time to meet the ladies.

Some of the girls are still sporting their shaggy winter coats. 

Most of these females are pregnant, and the ranger reported they can be a bit cranky. We were told about an elk chasing a ranger earlier today. We respected the advice and followed the signs that are posted around the meadow. Actually, Denisa was really taking the picture of the tiny blue birds perched on the top of the sign.

We stopped in at the national park visitor center next to the ocean, and caught a blue sky picture of Mark at the beach on his birthday. That blue sky is going to be his best gift today.

The fields close to the coast are now blooming with lupines, so that must be his birthday bouquet.

We had gotten the advice to visit the Lady Bird Johnson Grove to get some of the best views of old-growth redwoods in the national park. Like most of the trees that survived early logging, this grove is in the mountains up a treacherous road. This narrow road has no lines or shoulders, and meeting an oversize load is a little scary.

Our ears needed to pop as we kept gaining altitude. Good things we had Jelly Belly beans on board for something to chew on. We made it safely to the grove we were looking for--the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. It was named after the country's first lady, who loved tall trees and flowers almost as much as we do. You can see Mark in the picture below, basking in the sunshine on his blue-sky birthday.

The only problem with this stop in Redwood National Park is that he might have a sore neck on his birthday from looking to the tops of these big trees.

We've seen lots of fire scars, but this one burned all the way to the top, hollowing out the center of this tree that is still alive and well.

It's still amazing to us that a tree can burn so much that you can see through the base, but it is still growing and green a hundred years later. They are protected by their thick bark, which doesn't have the volatile resins found in pines and spruce. Also their sap is largely water. Both of those things slow combustion of the redwood while other trees will burn completely up in the same forest fire.

It's also amazing that you can touch two trees at the same time, that are perfectly straight and reach 300 feet into the sky.

As we left the Lady Bird Johnson grove, we drove back down that twisting paved road back to Highway 101. If we thought we were finished with bad roads for the day, we were wrong. We had been advised that Fern Canyon was a beautiful place. That would be something special for a birthday hike. The only problem is the 8 mile drive to Fern Canyon starts on a narrow and muddy dirt road that winds through the forest.

When we got down the mountain all the way to the coast, we asked the ranger if the road would get better. She laughed and replied, "No, it's quite a bit worse." This road was covered with pot holes of undetermined depths because they were all filled with water.

Then there was the creek crossing we had to drive through. Incidentally, following our decision to offer more rides to stranded hikers, we took a mother and her adult daughter from New York back to their car through this section so they wouldn't have the added hike through the water.

After those harrowing eight miles, it was a short hike into Fern Canyon. True to its name, it is a canyon covered with ferns.

Because of all the moisture this year, the canyon has a healthy creek running through it. Denisa wore her crocs, so she waded through the icy water with reckless abandon.

Mark, however, is wearing hiking boots and socks, and he would really like to keep his feet dry. So he is making creative use of logs and stepping stones to make his way into the canyon.

Denisa's way is much faster, but Mark's agility is taking him dry-footed into the canyon.

Even though they all seem to look alike to us, the visitor center said there are six different types of ferns cascading off the walls of the canyon.

The birthday boy finally got to some areas that were just too big to jump without stepping stone options.

Denisa would have carried him over the water if she could, but he ended up with a double footed splash into the water.

We made the hike back to the car, and then stopped in at Gold Bluff Beach. This is the second stroll along the ocean on Mark's birthday. We've been to lots of beaches in the last two months, and this was another pretty one. As you can see, his are the only foot prints in the sand.

Just over the dunes from the ocean were some more of the Roosevelt Elk. For some reason, we never thought we would see ocean and elk in the same picture, but you can see the waves peeking over the dunes.

We remembered the ranger's story about the cranky elks. This girl was sticking out her tongue, so we gave her a wide berth.

We had one more thing on our list of suggested stops from John and Barbara. That would be a trip to the viewpoint over the mouth of the Klamath River.

Our campground is right on the Klamath River, just a mile or so up-river from here. It empties into the big open ocean right in front of the viewpoint. We brought the binoculars, hoping to spot one of the gray whales and calves that are now moving north through this area after their winter in the south. We have been scanning the ocean horizon at every stop, but we still haven't spotted any whales.

We've had a lot of wildlife pictures today, but we also have to include this handsome little snail that was on the trail.

It was a half-mile narrow trail down to the lower viewpoint, through tall grass. The good news is the lupines are blooming nicely here close to the ocean.

We also see that the Queen Anne's Lace are just exploding open into full bloom.

Denisa likes to take pictures of flowers (obviously), and these were two unusual blooms on the hills overlooking the ocean. It was a beautiful walk down the side of the mountain to the ocean.

The bad news is that there were plenty of ticks waiting to catch a ride out of that tall grass. We found three ticks on our jeans when we got back to the car. We see tick-warning signs at many of the trail heads, and we know that California is definitely a tick state. So we are vigilant about checking for them.

By the time we hiked back up the mountain, the sun was getting low in the sky. The birthday boy also gets to choose his birthday meal. Several days ago, we purchased this filet mignon from the local butcher shop. That's Mark's favorite meal with a baked potato and broccoli/rice/cheese casserole.

The sun was setting over the Klamath River as the steaks were on the grill. It was a full day of activities for the birthday boy. We went from the mountains to the ocean to the canyon and back home to the river. It's hard to make a day extra special, when so many of our days are special, but this one was pretty dang good.