Redwood National and State Parks is a collection of four parks – Redwood National Park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park (collectively “Redwoods”) – administered by the National Parks Service and California Park Service.
Redwoods is one of several national parks that does not charge an admission fee for daily visitors. A few areas within the parks charge a day use permit, but remain free for holders of America the Beautiful or similar passes.
Driving south from Oregon, our Redwoods journey started in the northern-most park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. We booked a night at the Hiouchi Motel based on its reviews for cleanliness and proximity to the area’s most popular trails. For food and gas we drove over to Crescent City. While the Hiouchi Motel is great for being near the trails, there is nothing else worth seeing or doing in Hiouchi.
While checking into the motel, the manager politely suggested that we walk the Stout Memorial Grove Trail and gave us a slip of paper with directions on how to reach it. Stephanie, incredibly, asked if we would see any redwood trees on this trail. How the manager was able to keep it together is beyond me. After giving Stephanie the briefest look of, where are you from and where in the hell do you think you are, the manager replied that, yes, she would see plenty of redwood trees.
To reach Stout Memorial Grove Trail you have to drive down Howland Hill Road, a beautiful one to two lane gravel road. It’s well graded and suitable for passenger cars. Because the road literally weaves between redwood trees, its width varies greatly. There is plenty of room to pull over as needed for passing cars, and all drivers were quick to cooperate.
We parked at the trailhead for the Jedediah Smith River Trail, a one mile out and back trail that leads to the Stout Memorial Grove Trail. In hindsight should have skipped the river trail and driven straight to the Stout Memorial Grove Trail parking area. The river trail is mostly rocks and tree roots, without much in the way of river views. It is entirely uninteresting.
On the other hand, the Stout Memorial Grove Trail is fantastic. It is a 0.5 mile loop, a wide, easy walking path. The trail was so smooth you could easily walk it in flip flops, if not barefoot.
After completing this hike, we drove over to the Simpson-Reed Trail, another short loop at 0.9 mile. And another gorgeous trail. The wind was blowing pretty steadily and the falling redwood leaves sounded like rain.
By this time I realized that I was taking a lot of photographs of tree trunks. Redwood trees are way too tall to be captured in one decent photograph. It hurts your neck to keep trying to look up at them. So tree trunk photographs it is.
These trails were the perfect half-day introduction to Redwoods. Over the next several days we learned that short loop trails are the most scenic trails in Redwoods.
The next morning we got up pretty early to drive back down Howland Hill Road to the Mill Creek Trail. Upon arriving at the trailhead, about 8:30 AM, we found the parking area about one-third full. I breathed a sigh of relief as I was pretty worried about parking. There is not a lot of parking, so arriving early (especially in the summer) is a good idea.
We hiked the Mill Creek Trail to the Grove of Titans. This is a very well-maintained trail, starting as a wide, gravel and dirt trail, transitioning to a metal boardwalk near the Grove of Titans. After completing the 1.7 mile out and back hike, we found the parking area mostly full. This was unsurprising given the number of hikers we passed on this quite popular trail.
After driving the remaining length of Howland Hill Road out to Crescent City, we turned south towards Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park and drove through it without stopping. With few exceptions, it appears that most of the trails in this park are for mountain bikers and horses, or longer backcountry hikes.
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park was our next destination, which we entered on Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway. By the time we arrived it was time for lunch. Several picnic tables at the visitor’s center were in use, so we drove to the campground entrance and learned that plenty of picnic tables are available along the meadow for day use. Perfect.
One of the features of Prairie Creek is a large meadow that is home to a herd of elk. Signs are everywhere warning people not to approach or feed the elk. Naturally the elk were not present when we arrived. Still the meadow was a nice backdrop for lunch.
After lunch we grabbed our backpacks and took off on another hike. From the visitor’s center we took the Karl Knapp Trail to Big Tree, where we hopped onto the Cathedral Trees Trail to loop back to the visitor’s center for a 2.9 mile hike.
The Karl Knapp Trail is a heavily used, mostly flat, graded gravel and dirt trail. We even saw several strollers on this trail. Cathedral Trees Trail, however, is an actual trail with tree roots and rocks. My kind of trail. Well defined, but not busy. Cathedral Trees Trail, at least the first mile of it from Big Tree, is probably my favorite trail in all of the Redwoods. Unfortunately the last half mile closest to visitor center follows a creek through a typical forest without redwood trees. Quite boring, but flat and easy.
For our final hike of the day we planned to visit Fern Canyon, which is in the Gold Bluffs Beach day use area. This area requires a day use permit ($10) and, during busy summer months, a timed entry reservation. The day use permit fee was covered by our America the Beautiful pass, and we arrived on the first day that timed reservations were not required.
Davison Road, a narrow dirt road that winds through redwood trees downhill to the coast, is the only route to Gold Bluffs Beach. When you reach the coast the road goes past a ranger station and then turns north heading towards Gold Bluffs Beach and the parking area at the campground. In several places along the coast the dirt road is badly eroded with massive potholes. We slowly and carefully navigated the potholes in Stephanie’s Nissan Maxima without problem. But you know it’s a rough section when even large pickup trucks are driving very slowly.
Regrettably we did not make it all the way to Fern Canyon after being stymied by a stream crossing. When we arrived the water was not deep, maybe a few inches, and the stream was not wide, no more than 8 to 10 feet. Our concern was the seemingly steep bank on opposite side. After getting out of the car and walking around a bit, we decided not to risk running the nose of Stephanie’s car straight into the stream bank on the opposite side. Nissan Maximas are not exactly blessed with high clearance.
In hindsight that may have been the stupidest decision we made on this entire trip. We should have just plowed ahead (figuratively and maybe even literally). We probably could have made it and, if not, her car does have a reverse gear.
Hiking from Gold Bluffs Beach to Fern Canyon is possible, and we saw others doing it, but we did not feel like adding several extra miles to our legs that day.
Instead, our reward for chickening out was enjoying Gold Bluffs Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches we’ve ever visited. Few people were on the beach, maybe five or six in addition to us, along with tons of sea gulls, numerous pelicans, and even a few sea lions playing in the surf.
Much to Stephanie’s delight the campground is home a huge patch of blackberry bushes, prompting her to fill up a couple of empty water bottles with blackberries.
After relaxing at the beach and eating blackberries it was time to head out and continue sightseeing. Our plan was to walk the Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail in Redwood National Park, but it had already been a long day and we were feeling a bit lazy by this point. And, to be honest, I think we were getting a bit tired of looking at trees.
Instead, we began the 45 minute drive south to our Airbnb in Arcata (actually Manila), our base for next few days.
Total hiking in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, 7 miles:
Jedediah Smith River Trail, 1.0 mile
Stout Memorial Grove Trail, 0.5 mile
Simpson-Reed Trail, 0.9 mile
Mill Creek Trail / Grove of Titans, 1.7 miles
Karl Knapp Trail / Cathedral Trees Trail, 2.9 miles
Garrett and Stephanie
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Always wanted to see The redwood trees, this will make make the trip hopefully soon 🙂 thank you for detailed info