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The explosion wasn't anywhere as dramatic as when rangers blew up a whale that washed ashore a few years ago, but trail crews at Redwood National and State Park dynamited a giant redwood tree that fell on Newton P. Drury Scenic Parkway and hope to reopen the famous road by Friday. The tree, a coastal redwood that was eight feet in diameter, was one of several that fell in a big [...]

The Lord works in mysterious ways, much to the delight of a young man in search of a boat. Watch this one-minute video to show how divine intervention can work in the outdoors: http://www.youtube.com/user/triumphboat           Feel great in the next 24 hours: Hike. Bike. Camp. Fish. Boat. Wildlife watch. Explore. For the new edition of California Camping, go to http://74.220.215.219/~tomstien/books/california-camping/

http://vimeo.com/31416192

  In a flashpoint moment at dusk last week, Michael Furniss and I came around a bend in deep forest on the Friendship Ridge Trail, on the last leg of a loop hike, and found ourselves staring into the bugged-out eyes of what appeared a 175-pound juvenile female, about 40 feet away. It then ran straight at us. Furniss, in the lead, leapt behind a tree to his right for [...]

A fly-in of thousands of sandhill cranes at Woodbridge Ecological Reserve on Saturday evening portends more great things this weekend for the annual Sandhill Crane Festival in Lodi. From 6 p.m. to dusk off Woodbridge Road, the cranes have been cascading across the sky in a mind-cracking scene, one of nature's most spectacular events in California. The dusk sky can fill with the birds, with wingspans reaching 7 feet, cruising [...]

    Off San Gregorio, a fisherman enjoying a rare sunny day out of Half Moon Bay felt his line go tap-tap-tap. Doug Laughlin instantly set the hook and let out a shout. "Got him!" He wrestled with a big rockfish on his line, and when he gained a few turns of the reel, the fish surged away in short bulldog-like power bursts. It turned out to be a big [...]