Avenue of the Giants

We woke up to an interesting view with the ocean on one side of the van and llamas on the other. The turnout we slept at became pretty popular overnight and we were greeted with a trailer containing two llamas that had pulled over for a rest. The driver had brought the animals out and tied them off to take a break from traveling and get some air. Once we cleaned up the van and were ready to get moving, we continued up Highway 1 and left the llamas in the distance.

Tying along with the ‘spontaneously stopping for no reason other than that we want to,’ we crossed over a bridge and saw some people swimming in the river below. After two seconds of deciding we were hot and hadn’t showered in a few days, we pulled off and found our way down to the riverbank. I remember having hopes that maybe there were hot springs, however that definitely wasn’t the case and once I stepped in the water I realized how much I didn’t actually need that shower.

Eventually Highway 1 came to an end. All in all the scenic drive was pretty fun and the curvy road leading along the ocean is a must. On our way to Redwood National Park, we had two options – either take the highway straight there or go down Avenue of the Giants. Switching one landscape for another, we decided to take the scenic route and headed down the avenue. Honestly if you’re wanting to see some Redwoods I highly recommend doing this drive. The road is lined with many of the infamous trees. We pulled over at Humboldt State Park and (dare I say it) I wish we spent more time here than in the National Park itself.

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The Humboldt visitor center was a nice place to relax outside with a cup of free tea (coffee on Michael’s end,) use their wifi to check in on all the things online, and take a quick trip to the bathroom. We ventured around the woods for only a short while, walking in and out of the trees that dwarfed our adventure mobile. It was getting late in the day at this point, so we drove into Eureka where we went to Walmart, Safeway, and finally (or so we thought) McDonalds to spend the night. After deciding we weren’t very comfortable sleeping there, we drove out of the city and pulled off at a rest area for the night.

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Redwood National Park is quite an interesting park since it overlaps with the State Park. Arriving at one of the visitor centers, we chatted with a worker who was very helpful and knowledgeable. She helped us out explaining the different trails and after deciding on the Tall Trees Grove trail she gave us a required but free permit for the locked road and we headed toward our destination. This is a four mile round trip hike with about 1,600 feet of elevation gain. If you ever plan on doing this hike I highly recommend setting the time aside so you can wander around, sit and enjoy the trees, and take lots of photos/videos. One of these videos included Michael basically falling into an opening at the base of a Redwood.

There’s a branch off of the trail that led us out to the Redwood Creek. We spent probably a half hour out there just skipping stones and having fun. Back into the thick of the trees, we looped around the trail stopping many times along the way to play in the grove. I’ve mentioned this previously, but the coastal forests in California have some of the best underbrush full of moss covered trees and ferns. Not to mention the Redwood trees here have grown as tall as 350 feet!

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After our hike back up, we went to our second visitor center of the park so I could get a postcard. This visitor center was pretty cool and included an “Elk horn” tree which isn’t actually a real tree at all. The story is that an elk rammed a tree so hard its antlers got lodged and the tree ended up growing around the skull. This stop was also pretty neat because right outside is a large field where elk graze and gather. There were about ten elk and everyone was stopped all over to see them.

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I don’t know if I’ve made it quite known yet, but ferns are one of my favorite plants. I’m sure you can guess my excitement when I read about Fern Canyon. The drive to the trail parking lot included dirt roads and many more elk along the way. A lot of people parked further away from the actual parking lot due to giant lake puddles that covered the road, so if you don’t feel like baha-ing your vehicle through the water that’s always an option. The hike to the canyon is relatively short and mild (from the real parking area,) and you can make it as short as you want. Apparently the whole hike can be done as a 1.1 mile loop, however we just went as deep into the canyon as we could without climbing over too many fallen trees or getting too wet. The views themselves are beautiful. The walls become covered with cascading ferns from top to bottom and everything is so lush and green.

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There’s a campground on the road leading away from the canyon where we were able to stop and take a nice shower after a hot, humid day of hiking. Somewhere along the way I also thought I saw a whale and made Michael turn back to an ocean pull off where we indeed did not see a whale. After another eventful day of hiking through some old trees and driving along the ocean we drove into Crescent City and called it a night.