A Couple of Walks among the Coastal Redwoods

Monique and I decided to visit some tall trees while we were traveling along the northern coast of California. The original plan involved getting up early in the morning after our stop in McKinleyville to visit Redwood National and State Park to hike to the "Tall Trees" grove in Redwood National Park, home of several trees that are more than 350 feet tall.

Unfortunately, Redwood National Park was closed due to a federal government shutdown engineered by bungling US House Republicans. Fortunately, it's Redwood National and State Park, a joint federal/state operation. Since California is not run by delusional Tea Partiers, the state portions of the joint park were all still open.

And they were lovely!

We started at the Prairie Creek park headquarters, which was built by the CCC during the Great Depression. The guy behind the counter at the gift shop gave us three great recommendations: the two-mile Prairie Creek loop trail from the HQ out to "Big Tree"; the Klamath River Overlook up the coast; and Howland Hill Road; a little dirt road through Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.

Here are some photos from our walk along Prairie Creek:

After only a few hundred feet we realized the dude at the desk had set us on a righteous course. What I've always loved about walking among redwoods is the sense of time and scale combined with real peacefulness. It's impossible to rush among the redwoods.

I respect a tree that can make me look skinny.

If you look carefully at that tiny bright spot just above the ferns in the bottom of the photo you can spot Monique, a bit overexposed by a ray of sunlight.

The lush quiet and beauty extends to the forest's undergrowth. Here we see a big-leaf maple just taking on its fall colors.

This was one of my favorite redwoods along the trail. It was easily 300+ feet tall. Two hundred feet above the forest floor the main branch splits into two trunks. Each of those giant redwood trunks soars another hundred feet or more above the split.

Monique respects a tree trunk that makes her look short.

Tree after tree like this.

Here I am with "Big Tree" which was indeed big, thought it wasn't the tallest of the many trees along the trail. Big Tree is 300+ feet tall, 22 feet in diameter, and at least 1,500 years old. Big Tree was an important tree in the history of the protection of the park. A rumor that a homesteader planned to cut it down to convert the stump into a dance floor was one of the spurs that led to the foundation of the Save the Redwoods League in 1918.

In 1850 the coastal redwood forests covered 2,000,000 acres. There are now only 118,000 acres of old-growth redwoods left.

So peaceful.

So inspiring.

And then, after a few hours walking among the redwoods, it was time to head North. Next stop, the Klamath River overlook:

The overlook sits on a bluff about 800-feet above the mouth of the Klamath River. The view is truly spectacular.  It was, however, more than a wee bit windy up there that day. So we headed to lower altitudes and lunched next to the Ocean in the aptly named "False Klamath Cove" beach near Wilson Creek. Not too shabby:

We'd taken our time with our morning hike, so our third redwood state-park recommendation -- Howland Hill Road, the little dirt road through Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park -- had to wait for our return trip, since we were expected that evening up at my aunt and uncle's place in Oregon.

It was well worth keeping that dirt road on the "to-do" list on the way back. Among the places it visits is Stout Grove, a grove of old-growth redwoods donated by the widow of a lumber baron in 1929. I'm glad she saved it for us:

Serene, beautiful, and majestic.

One of the things we didn't capture well in photos was the scale of the fallen redwoods on the forest floors. Each of these fallen giants creates a vast ecosystem of its own.

The grove includes the Stout Tree, the bulkiest known coastal redwood at 340 feet tall and 16 feet in diameter at chest height. Here I am standing next to it, on the right side of this photo. I didn't realize I was standing next to a record-holder or we might've tried to get a better picture of the whole tree ... or as much of it as I could fit in my wide-angle lens.

All I thought at the time was "Wow, what a monster! It's even bigger than Big Tree!!"

After walking around Stout Grove, it was time to get back on our little dirt road and head back out to the coast for another lunch stop at False Klamath Cove:

The lunchtime scenery? Not too shabby. Again.

Our last visit with the redwoods wasn't a walk, alas. But as we drove South along Highway 101 we took the 32-mile-long "Avenue of the Giants" scenic detour through Humboldt State Park. It was well worth the extra time.  We were too busy rubbernecking to shoot any pictures as we drove among the trees. But I did grab a photo of the park visitor center. The center is chock full of redwood history, biology, and Charles Kellogg's Travel Log, the world's first RV, which was built in 1917 by traveling naturalist Kellogg from the trunk from a fallen redwood.

Well done, California state park system. Well done.