Redwoods!

Crescent City, California

Got up early yesterday and headed into Redwood Park. Which, by the way, is multiple parks. There is Redwoods National Park and then there are the Redwoods State Parks: Humboldt Redwoods State Park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, all clustered together up here in Northern California. Who knew? Well, probably lots of people, but I didn't. Also, there is no charge to get into any of these parks. I believe the only one we were not in today was Jedediah Smith. Maybe. Definitely we went through Prairie Creek and the national park. Early means we were out of here by about 8:40, so not so early.

We have sort of set a pattern for our days in the National parks: start with a decent hike, eat some lunch, and then drive through some scenic areas with a couple quick sites to see. The hike we picked for Redwoods was the Tall Trees Grove. The park allows only a limited number of vehicles to the trailhead everyday, and to be one of those vehicles we had to get ourselves a permit at a visitors center. There is a visitors center here in Crescent City where we are staying, but we left before it opened and ended up getting our permit at the Prairie Creek visitors center, but it really wasn't too difficult. We did have to listen to the dire warnings of bears and mountain lions being in the area and promise to call if we saw any, even as I am reading not to rely on my phone's GPS because it probably won't work out there, just like my phone itself won't.

The drive to the trailhead involves a narrow dirt road behind a locked gate that the nice lady at the visitor's center gave us "today's" code to. Do they actually change the combination from one day to the next? Maybe. But whatever, it certainly adds to the adventure to have to use a secret code to get through a locked gate to an unpaved road that leads to your destination. The hike itself was 4 miles: 1 1/2 to get to the grove (all down hill), a 1 mile loop through the grove, and then that 1 1/2 miles back to the car. But there are plenty of 'tall trees' all along the rote, not just withing the grove itself. The former tallest tree in the world, the Libby Tree, is in this grove of trees. Its been demoted since it both shrank AND taller trees have been discovered, still it is something like 360 feet high, nothing to be ashamed of. Two things that surprised me were the gorgeous moss draped maple trees at one end of the grove loop and the burnt redwoods. Redwood trees survive fire and so there are lots of obviously burnt trees still growing strong. We ate our lunch in the grove, sitting on a fallen redwood trunk,
legs dangling a good foot above the ground.

After we hiked our way back out, with basically no whiners whatsoever, we commenced our driving tour of the park stopping first at an overlook of the valley we had just hiked through. Then we tricked the kids into hiking an additional mile loop at the Lady Bird Johnson grove where the park was dedicated in 1969. Then back through the Drury Scenic Parkway and along the Coastal Loop Drive near Klamath (partially unpaved and really narrow and possibly in danger of falling into the sea soon....) where we got out to see the WW II radar station cleverly disguised as a farmhouse and barn. Then we headed home to eat and rest in our 70s throwback house on the harbor.