My fervor to talk to you about being on the road got me out of order, so let me take a moment to set the scene. I left the Hoh Rainforest and Olympic peninsula moving south through Oregon and down to Crescent City. While my drive was coastal, my desire to get to Crescent City wasn’t motivated by the sea. I wanted to lose myself in the forest again, to walk amongst giants, to be awed by California’s famous redwood trees. From Crescent City until Leggett, California, that is exactly what I did. Awed is exactly what I was.
The redwood trees that grow along California’s coast are as grand as any mountain I’ve encountered on this road trip and, perhaps, even more so. We (people) tend not to move mountains. But we have far fewer qualms about cutting down trees. Yet the redwoods endure, and some of them have done so for two and three thousand years. They have withstood deforestation. They thrive despite earthquakes, forest fires, and climate change. When something endures past such substantial threats, well, I find myself unable to doubt the hand of something bigger than even the trees in that. As I walked through them, I felt privileged. We steward giants in this country. I hope we never forget that.
My intro to the Redwoods
Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park
The redwoods run from Big Sur, California to Oregon, mostly keeping within 10 miles of the coast. Forty-five percent of California’s old growth redwoods, e.g., the really really big trees, are protected by a mix of California state parks and Redwood National Park. My introduction to the redwoods began in Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park hiking the Boy Scout Tree Trail. Jedidiah Smith Park has approximately 7% of California’s old growth redwoods, and it provides one phenomenal introduction to these trees.
I started early-ish, driving into the park from Crescent City. As I headed toward the trailhead the park looked normal. The trees to the sides of me didn’t stand out as different, the brush around me was low to the ground, the curving dirt road under me looked like roads I’d seen in parks all over the country. And then, all of the sudden, it wasn’t typical anymore. The redwoods shot up in front of me, tall, red, round, and beautiful. I gasped when I saw them, stopping the car right there, getting out to look and take a picture of Princess surrounded by giants. (This would not be last picture of Princess and these trees which, as you’ll learn, led to a very different trip than anticipated, but more about that later).
I was taken in from that moment, and by the end of my hike down Boy Scout Tree Trail I was thoroughly enthralled. These trees were not just magnificent to look at. Surrounded by them as I hiked, they felt ancient.
For miles I could hear nothing more than my footfalls echoing through the trees, softened by the needles on the ground which have piled up over the centuries allowing the trees to change even the ground below them. Slats of light shown through the forest from the canopy miles above highlighting the reds, grays, and greens around me. Birds flitted in and out of the high branches. I forgot about bears. I forgot about the possibility of twisting ankles, tripping, falling alone in the forest. All that mattered were these giants that reminded me how small I am in the scheme of it all. One year of a sabbatical, ten years of a career, 39 years of life, generations of Callais, Carpenters, Heberts, Robinos, and Hills and so on, felt like nothing in the span of the eons that these trees and this forest had stood there. There was something comforting in that, something real, a reason to feel reverent and thoroughly alive as I hiked through the forest, living another moment in the wild all to myself except for the giants.
Below are a few pictures from my walk, and to be honest, I took very few of just the trees. My photography skills are far from being able to capture their grandeur so I thought I’d leave most of my time in the woods to my memory alone.
Prairie Creek State Park: Gold Bluffs Beach & Fern Canyon
After hiking through Jedidiah Smith, I headed south on Hwy 101, enjoying more views of trees and glimpses of the coast on my way to Gold Bluffs Beach Campground in Prairie Creek State Park to camp for the night. When I got to Prairie Creek, I was greeted with unpaved, redwood-lined roads that were dotted with creek crossings all the way to the campground. (Princess was VERY excited about the creek crossings). The campground was backed by tall, golden bluffs that ran down to the dunes and white sand beach that stretched out for miles in front of it.
Just two miles and few more creeks down the road was Fern Canyon, which was my next and last hike of the day. Fern Canyon makes up in wonder all that it lacks in length (just 1 mile). It looks primeval. The canyon walls blanketed in fern extend 50 feet up from the canyon floor, which is shaped by a shallow stream. The hike weaves you through the canyon, over the stream via a series of makeshift bridges or climbs over and on top of giant downed trees. Occasionally, I resigned myself to getting my feet wet. My shoes were gortex. It was fine. Really, it was more than fine. It was my favorite hike on this trip, and perhaps ever.
The ferns, the canyon, the scenery, the quiet sound of water dripping down the canyon walls and into the stream, I felt like dinosaurs might be waiting around every corner (and, in fact, Jurassic Park 2 was filmed here). As incredible as the redwoods are, I can’t imagine ever experiencing something as otherworldly as the canyon again in my life. The experience was even better because it was wholly unanticipated. This was a stop that was highly recommended, but about which I had no expectations. My pictures won’t do it justice (but I’ll include them anyway). If you’d like to get a real feel for it though, you can check out this scene from Jurassic Park. It was just like that, I promise, aside from the dinosaurs.
After my hike through the canyon, I spent the afternoon on that wide sandy beach practicing yoga, watching the waves roll in, and relishing the sun turn the bluffs an even deeper shade of gold to cap off a very, very good day.
Redwoods National Park
I went to bed on a redwood, Fern Canyon, beach afternoon high thinking that my first day in the redwoods could not be topped. My second day proved me wrong. I started the day with a visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Memorial Grove, which sits in the area of the redwoods that is protected as a national park (there is a lot of overlap in the national/state park system that I haven’t done the research to understand, but suffice it to say that this is a national park hike). As I learned on the hike, this grove of redwoods was dedicated to Lady Bird Johnson for her conservation and environmental work. It is short and easily accessible—the hard ground actually makes it possible for people in wheelchairs to take the hike, which I thought was pretty cool—and the trees are different.
In Jedidiah Smith, the trees were giants old and young, but they were mostly whole. Here, there were old, healthy trees, but also several burned-out trees with holes large enough to stand in creating an amazing mix of trees as well as photo opportunities. While I didn’t take too many of those photos (see note above about inability to capture these trees in any justified way), I watched many families—whole families—piling into burned-out trees for pictures. The two trees below should, hopefully, give you a sense of just how big the trees in this grove were if the mental images of families piling into trees don’t.
Family photos and burned out trees aside, the best part of the hike for me was the open circular clearing halfway through where you could sit, stare, and enjoy these giants for a while. And that is what I did for much of the morning before heading to Big Tree, because I wanted to see something that could be called “big” amongst these giants.
For fun, Big Trees stats are below, and I will confirm that, yes, it was a big tree. The internet informs me though that it is not the biggest.
Trinidad
After checking out the Big Tree, I got back on the road to head south to Trinidad to spend some more time on the coast that helps makes these giants possible. I could probably write a whole separate post about Trinidad, which is filled with scenic drives, dramatic cliffs, and (an added bonus for me) a lot of small sections of rocks to climb at lookout points and on the way to secluded beaches. Instead, I’ll just give you the highlights and the theme. Yes, my time in Trinidad had a theme that developed organically over the course of the day. Patience, pausing, waiting. At every turn, it felt like that was exactly what I needed to do, and I was rewarded for it when I did.
You see, I had timed my drive into Trinidad for the afternoon because, while the clouds that come off the coast often make for magical moments in the trees, they make for terrible coastal views . Unfortunately, even arriving around 1 p.m. wasn’t early enough. Clouds hung around Patrick’s Point and Trinidad Head, the primary beach viewpoints in the area. I improvised. I’d been eating a lot of almond butter and banana sandwiches made off of the back of the Jeep for lunch, so I treated myself to fish and chips at The Lighthouse Grill. One meal, a few chapters of my latest book (this one about a coyote walker that takes place in Washington/Oregon/Montana, which I started rereading when I was traveling through those places), and a stop for gas and ice (yes, always gas and iced), and the clouds cleared.
This was my intro to the day’s theme. Good things do apparently come to those who wait, and I was treated to the incredible views below of the coast around Trinidad.
My second chance to wait for something beautiful came when hiking Trinidad Head trail. I was huffing and sweating along as I walked up the hill enjoying the views, but also thinking that I needed to stop hiking. Not just stop hiking that trail, but to take a break from hiking any trails. The sun I had so paitently waited for seemed to have thrown me into nature overload. When I got to the top of the trail I stopped to sit and take in the 360 degree views and that is when I saw it. Directly below me was a whale. This was the first whale I have ever seen outside of an aquarium. It was also surprising because it is late in the season for them to still be at Trinidad. But yet, there it was, reminding me that all of the hiking, huffing and puffing, and sweating is worth it because the giants you see along the way might just amaze you. And if you stop and wait patiently, they might even surprise you.
At this point, I was basically ready to move to California and live on this coast. Ancient ferns, empty beaches, giant trees, life lessons, and now a whale. I mean, what more do you need, really?
A sunset. You need a gorgeous sunset while you watch people surf at Moonstone Beach. Yeah, I was sold. 100% sold.
By the time I made it to Eureka to camp for the night, all I could do was say thank you to California and the redwood coast for another incredible day.
**Please excuse all typos, grammatical errors, and other weird punctuation. Sometimes the light in Princess isn’t the best for proofing. Since this isn’t a legal brief, I’m just going to let it go until I get to a place where I can fix it.**
😍😍😍 Soooo amazing!!
¡¡Impresionante y hermoso!! Te quiero, amiga