4 days in the Coast Redwoods (2020)

N.B. this post was written during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown years of 2020-2022, so that's the context for a lot of the pandemic references here.

We've been good about staying home during the pandemic -- our last trip was in October 2020 to celebrate our 8-year anniversary (go us!). COVID-19 has left me languishing; it's been deeply suffocating to be unable to truly disconnect from the blah of everyday routine. D's vacation days are limited compared to mine, but we scrapped together a 4-day trip up and down the Northern California coast in late spring.

Both of us first visited the Redwood State and National Parks several years ago, but spent only about a day and a half across all the parks. I was really hoping my next trip there would be a little more relaxed and leave room for more exploration, but alas, we're so dependent on our jobs for time off!

Unfortunately, as the date of our trip drew nearer, so did an oncoming cold front brewing off the coast. Our itinerary - originally spread out evenly over four days - had to be cut and condensed into effectively two days due to intense rain and thunderstorms in the forecast. It was a bummer, but in no way was some rain going to dampen our spirits!

Day 1: the drive north on highway 101

We left the Bay Area around 7am so that we would have enough time for the 7-hour drive to our final destination: Jedediah Smith Redwood Park. Both of us struggle in the mornings, but it can be done - so if you're not a morning person, I believe in you.

After a few bathroom breaks and gas refills, we turned off the 101 North and onto the scenic Avenue of the Giants drive.

Tip: Target and grocery stores are great options for cleaner restrooms, especially during the pandemic, when a lot of gas stations don't keep their restrooms open to the public.

We didn't have time to stop at all the groves along the way, nor were we particularly interested in paying a fee to visit the popular, touristy, drive-through the trees, e.g. the Shrine Tree. Our main stops for the Avenue of the Giants were:

• the Visitor's Center near Myers Flat -- we like to collect National Parks posters!
• Founders Grove and the Dyerville Giant

There's a pretty good map available on the main Avenue of the Giants website if you're trying to plan your stops.

From the Avenue of the Giants, we continued our drive north to Patrick's Point State Park. FYI: most state parks and beaches require entrance or parking fees. For Patrick's Point, the fee was $10/vehicle for a day pass - this also allows you to enter any other state park in the same day!

We originally planned to visit the park on our second day to watch the sunset, but the first day was going to be the sunniest day, so we decided to make the most of the good weather.

While there are tons of trails throughout the park, we decided to spend the only hour we had on a quick walk up to Wedding Rock and along the coastline before continuing on our drive to Jedediah Smith.

It was about 2-3pm by the time we left Patrick's Point and we still had another 2 hours to go before we would arrive at Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park. I was hoping to reach the park around 2pm so we could hike the Fern Falls and Boy Scout Tree Trail, but we were quite a bit behind schedule with all the gas and restroom stops. My aunt always said to "leave some room for regret" when traveling to places you like, so we'll just have to save that for next time!

The drive between Patrick's Point and Jedediah Smith was so breathtaking. There was a corner we turned where the road drops down to the beach, and you drive on top of a sand bar that separates the ocean and a lagoon, before it ramps up again to snake around the coastline. I wish I had a picture for it, but there wasn't anywhere to stop!

Our destination at Jedediah Smith was the ever-popular Stout Memorial Grove. We finally arrived at the parking lot around 5pm, after a bumpy 2 miles on Howland Hill Road, which is an unmaintained, dirt road. Our car is a 2WD SUV and fared just fine.

The Stout Memorial Grove is a short loop less than a mile long. It's considered the heart of Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and takes you through a grove of 300-foot old-growth coast redwoods. The park is also home to the Grove of Titans, where the locations of the the tallest trees in the world are kept secret. Redwoods were extensively logged in the 1900's after the San Francisco Bay Area earthquakes because redwood is an incredibly resilient, fire and disease-resistant wood that was highly desired after the earthquakes caused fires that burned the city down. The current redwood state parks in California preserve the last remaining old-growth redwood forests, a measly 5% of what used to cover the Pacific coast of the United States. You can learn more about these awe-inspiring organisms and how to protect them on the Save the Redwoods League website.

We spent the last couple hours of our day here, slowly walking through the forest, taking pictures, and skipping rocks along the Smith River. Although we didn't get to do any hiking today, we got to spend time in the park at the most perfect time of day. The forest was bathed in a golden, cashmere glow and we felt like we were in the woods of Princess Mononoke.

It was a lovely way to end the day. We drove to our Airbnb in Crescent City, which was about a 30-minute drive away from Jedediah Smith, cooked an instant ramen dinner while watching Kung Fu Panda, and hit the knocked out for the evening.

Day 2: the James Irvine and Miner's Ridge Loop

We rose bright and early for an hour-long drive from Crescent City to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in Orick, CA. Our one and only activity for the day was hiking the Miner's Ridge and James Irvine Trail Loop - one of the quintessential hikes to do in the Redwoods National and State Park system.

I don't have the literary prowess to wax poetic about the 101 drive to the depth that it deserves, but every turn was absolutely stunning. You'll have to bear with my car shots - the best views were the ones without turnouts or shoulders, and we didn't want to endanger ourselves or other cars on the highway by stopping in the middle of the road.

We did briefly stop at a gorgeous and uncrowded black sand beach on the drive down. We saw a couple there having a breakfast picnic, which is honestly such a fantastic idea.

When we arrived at the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park visitor center around 9am, most of the day use parking was already starting to fill up. I'd highly recommend getting there even earlier than we did; there are only about a dozen spots available for day use. The other spots you drive past when you turn onto the road to the visitor center are only meant for 30-minute parking.

The trail starts on a beautiful boardwalk that winds through the trees, and over the course of just a few minutes, you've walked along a stream and descended into a meadow guarded by old-growth redwoods a few hundred feet tall. Pacific trillium lined the trail in varying shades of whites, pinks, and reds.

Ten minutes into the hike, I whispered to D, "I think this is one of the best hikes we've done". We were the only people on the trail for the next two hours, only running into other pairs of hikers every few miles or so.

The trail intersects with Gold Bluffs Beach Road, an unpaved and unmaintained dirt road that leads to the Gold Bluffs Beach campsite and at its terminus, Fern Canyon. From here, we had the option to cross the road and hike along the beach for a mile, before winding back up to Fern Canyon; or, we could walk along the road to the Fern Canyon parking lot. We chose the latter based on recent AllTrails reports that it was difficult to cross the streams feeding into the ocean and neither of us wanted to hike in sand. We had recently hiked the Alamere Falls trail in Point Reyes National Seashore and were quickly reminded that walks on the beach are exhausting and not as romantic as movies and TV tell us it is!

We reached the Fern Canyon parking lot right around lunch time and just in time for a bathroom break (there are vault toilets here, how luxurious!). There were picnic tables scattered throughout the brush on a short path behind the toilets, but we decided to lunch on the beach. A bleached, fallen redwood served as our picnic bench whilst we munched on our cheese and avocado sandwiches, listened to the waves, sunbathed, and watched weary hikers who took the beach route climb the sand dunes to reach the picnic area.

The time came to start the hike back up through Fern Canyon and along Miner's Ridge, which would rejoin the James Irvine Trail and take us back to the parking lot.

Fern Canyon is easily one of the most unique and beautiful landscapes D and I have explored. It's reminiscent of the Narrows in Zion, except you're trading in the cathedrals of red, sedimentary rock for verdant curtains of ferns draped over the river canyon. And if you aren't familiar with this little bit of trivia, it was one of the places that inspired the landscape of Jurassic Park!

The trail is such a joy to hike: an obstacle course created by Mother Nature that you must defeat in order to get back on the Miner's Ridge trail. We hopped from rock to rock, climbed fallen trees, and splashed through the river. Be ready to get your feet wet and test your balancing skills!

D loves this kind of stuff and had an absolutely grand time. But I have an intense fear of falling, particularly the sensation of slipping and loss of control, so forcing myself to face that fear head on was quite challenging! And I actually found that jumping around and climbing things was a lot of fun, and it was a nice reminder that I do have kind of an adventurous side.

What a magical place: delicate waterfalls ran like threads down the canyon walls, ferns played catch with the golden light, and curtains of moss swayed with the occasional light breeze.

It was a bit crowded going through the first half of the canyon, but most people turned back a mile in as the river became deeper and rockier, and the maze of fallen trees to navigate lengthened. In fact, we actually had a bit of trouble navigating back to the main trail from the canyon. There's a small and inconspicuous set of stairs that turns up along the left bank of the canyon that is very easy to miss without a map or GPS. I highly recommend downloading a map from AllTrails, and even so we would've missed the trail and gotten stuck going down the canyon, if we didn't notice other hikers coming down the stairs. There was a bit more uphill on Miner's Ridge than when we were heading down the James Irvine trail, but it wasn't significant. AllTrails has this trail marked as moderate/hard due to the length of the trail (12-13 miles), but other than that the trail was pretty easy.

Once we got back onto the marked trail, it was easy sailing from there. The trail climbs pretty quickly back up to the ridge of the canyon. If you looked down, you'd be able to see the steep gorges of Fern Canyon following the trail.

We got back to our car around 2pm and it was time to chill. We fired up the Jetboil and warmed up some on-the-go bibimbap bowls made by Bibigo. (For some reason there's nothing about this item on Google, even though we bought it at Costco. The ones we had were awesome because they were vegetarian and could either be heated up with boiling water or microwaved. The veggies were vacuum-packed and the rice was already cooked, so it tasted as close to a fresh meal as one could get outdoors!)

After some noms and browsing the park gift shop to hunt for WPA-style parks posters and blankets to our collection, we decided to drive down Gold Bluffs Beach Road for fun before the hour-long drive to our Airbnb in Eureka.

Friendly reminder to practice Leave No Trace principles, i.e. pack out what you pack in. Even seemingly "harmless" things like fruit peels and nut shells should be packed out and properly disposed in a garbage can! These are not things native to the natural environment, and will damage the native ecosystems and pose a threat to its inhabitants.

A lot of the signs we passed warned that food brought in by visitors contributes to the reduction of marbled murrelet populations, an endangered bird species that nests in the redwood trees. Jays eat murrelet eggs and chicks, and started hunting in the redwood forests after gaining an appetite for human food from improperly-disposed food scraps left by park visitors. You can read more about these adorable birds and their fluffball chicks here. So before the next time you toss an apple core onto the ground, think of these cute, baby murrelets and all the other fragile, native species that need our protection!

Day 3: Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and Lady Bird Johnson Grove

With the storm hitting the coast on day 3, we opted for short stops and trails. Major moody vibes with an overcast sky, fog, and chilly winds whipping through the forests.

The first trail on our agenda today was the Cathedral Trees trail back in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: a leisurely, 3-mile trail through some of the biggest trees in the park. Before reaching the parking lot, we came across of herd of elk chilling in a small meadow in front of the redwood trees.

We started the trail near the Visitor's Center, and didn't see too many others walking into the forest. However, the trail intersects with a few key landmarks that don't require hiking to (Big Tree, for example) and these were the times we saw the most people.

I was so excited to see banana slugs! D thought I was weird because he's used to seeing them in the woods where he grew up, but I grew up in the city. They're so squishy-looking and personally, I think they're a pretty shade of yellow.

After a mile or so of wandering around, we finally arrived at Big Tree. Big Tree is the 13th largest single-stem coast redwood, standing at a height of over 280-ft and having lived for 1,500 years!

The size of the tree was astounding -- it was indeed a very, very big tree. There's not much to see after Big Tree and it was pretty crowded, so we headed back to the parking lot.

Our next stop was the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, one of the most popular hikes in the park. The trail is not entirely accessible, but is a great stop for families and anyone who has trouble with steeper grades since it is pretty much flat and paved a good portion of the trail. This grove of redwoods is unusual because they survive at 1200-ft elevation and in much chillier and foggier conditions, compared to most other redwood groves that grow in the warmer valley floors.

Much of this area is second-growth forest rather than old-growth, which means the trees are younger, all the same age, support less biodiversity, and won't reach the same volumes or heights as the record-holding redwood trees in the rest of the parks system. Second-growth forests are usually created by replanting the area after logging of old-growth forests. This means all the trees grow at the same rate, and eventually,they start to overcrowd and overlap with each other. This blocks sunlight from reaching the forest floor and prevents the development and growth of understory, which is critical to supporting a diversity of flora and fauna (and hence why these second-growth trees will never be as tall or thick as old-growth). Trees in old-growth forests can be of various sizes and ages, from a year to centuries old, and this multi-aged, multi-story environment allows a very rich understory to develop. These are forests that can support the largest diversity of wildlife and are actually way healthier and more capable of resisting diseases, fires, and other natural and human disasters, so let's do our best to protect them!

It was hard to appreciate the forest in solitude since the trail was quite crowded and some ahem, inconsiderate hikers were blasting their bluetooth speakers throughout the forest. Please leave your bluetooth speakers in the car or at home, or at least put some headphones on - not everyone wants to listen to your music, some of us just want to enjoy the sounds of nature. Thanks!

At this point, we had checked off the points of interests we planned for this trip. The day was still young, so what to do next? Turns out it was right about low tide so we went to find a beach to go tidepooling at! We picked a beach in Trinidad that had pretty pictures and reports of good tide pools as our final stop before we headed back to Eureka.

The path down to the beach was a little hard to find and pretty steep both ways. In fact, Google Maps actually took us to the wrong GPS location! We had to look on the map and look for a street that looked like it led closer to the beach and drive there.

The best time to go tidepooling is before the lowest tide -- unfortunately, we arrived half an hour after the lowest tide and missed out on the window to walk over the rocks further down on the beach. The Google reviews said that it's possible to walk up and around Pewetole Island (pictured above) and cross to the other side of the beach at low tide. Honestly, we weren't sure how that was possible since that section of water was quite deep and there was little beach to walk on.

We saw tons of urchins, anemones, starfish, some clams/mussels, but not many fish or crabs. The tide was rising pretty quickly and a good sign to head back.

We were on the road when I noticed a sign for a "scenic drive". One of the best things about D is how he's always game to do whatever, so we made a hard right instead of the left back onto the 101 highway and followed the signs.

I'm really glad D was the one doing the driving. I'm scared of driving windy, narrow, high-elevation roads and this definitely met the criteria. Most of it was dirt and gravel, and oftentimes had enough clearance for only one-way traffic. There were blind curves with steep drop-offs and no guard rails. Fortunately, the drive is only a few miles long, so I wasn't panicked for too long. It reminded us a lot of driving the Road to Hana in Maui. Definitely worth the detour though!

Day 4: the drive home

Our last day was a perfect driving day; I wasn't expecting the scenery to be so beautiful on a stormy day! It felt like we were watching the forests and mountains breathe - wisps of cirrus clouds rose and fell over layered blue and green ranges, while dark thunderclouds rumbled in the distance. Rain poured down on us as abruptly as it stopped, and sunshine and blue skies would break through for minutes at atime. A layer of fog hovered over the road, only to be dispersed by the occasional car passing us.

Most of these were shot from the car; I would've loved to pull over for each shot, but we would've never made it home. I actually put my camera down for most of the ride home and just appreciated the landscape passing by. We did, however, make a short stop to say hello to a few woolly friends, because how could you not?

And that's all folks! Four days is absolutely too short to get to appreciate everything the Northern California coastal redwoods have to offer, so here's hoping to more trips north in the future.