We stayed 3 nights at Klamath River RV Park while visiting the Redwood National Park. We didn’t spend much time here, since we were out sight seeing most of the time, but it was very peaceful and scenic. Redwood National Park is unique in that much of its land is actually made up of State Parks, since California started preserving the land before the federal government did. Our Guide Along tour started on Hwy 101 as we were driving to get to our campground, so we got to start learning about National Park and Humboldt Lagoons State Park area before we even parked the RV!
Since our campground was in the middle of all the combined National / State Park areas, we decided to split our exploration into two different shorter days instead of a really long one. The first day, we drove north to see what all we could see within Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park. Then we went south into Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and Redwood National Park on the second day.
DAY ONE
On the first day, we drove along the coast on Hwy 101, up to Crescent City. Then we headed east on 199 through Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, where we got our first good look at Redwoods as we hiked the Simpson-Reed Grove and Peterson Trail 1 mile loop. They’re big! It felt very Jurassic Park-ie. We made a loop back to Crescent City by driving the narrow, bumpy Howland Hill Road, stopping to hike the Stout Grove Trail. (There’s a video clip of us driving the road below.)
Driving on Howland Hill Road
DAY TWO
We drove the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway and stopped to find the Corkscrew Tree, which was cool. Next we hiked the 2 mileTrillium Falls Trail, which was another area that felt other-worldly, with lots of lush old growth. Then we drove a narrow, windy road back to the Gold Bluffs Beach area. Once parked, we hiked back to the Fern Canyon, which was fun and a bit different, with fern covered canyon walls on either side of us while we hiked along the creek. We were planning to put our water shoes on, but there were enough logs, stones and bridges going across the water, that we never actually needed them.
We hiked back to the truck to trade our dry water shoes for the picnic blanket and walked out to the beach to rest for a while and enjoy the sound of the crashing waves in the sunny 70 degree weather!
Randy went back out our last night here and captured some beautiful sunset pictures! (I stayed at the RV and baked some cookies and took a shower.)
I was a little worried that we wouldn’t think driving through the mountains and out of our way over to Redwood National Park was worth the extra time and effort, but we had a great time there and saw some unique sights that I’m glad we didn’t miss! And the icing on the cake was as we were leaving the campground, we saw a black bear walking down the road towards us.
You must be logged in to post a comment.