Walking on the beach across the street from the Redwood Youth Hostel.
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Tuesday, September 13 Before we left Oregon, we made a short side trip to Ashland: |
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The stream in Ashland's city park. |
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Then we were on our way back to California! Just before we passed through the town of Hiouchi, we turned off Rte 199 onto South Fork Rd which led us to Howland Hill Rd, a twisty, one-lane, mostly gravel road that follows an historic wagon route through the redwood forest and into Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. |
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It's no wonder they discourage driving this route in an RV! There are some extremely narrow passageways through the trees! We found a pullout near a trail which offered beautiful views of Smith River as we hiked.... |
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| ...into the redwood forest... | ||
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...and to the half-mile loop around Stout Grove: |
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...where the trees were... |
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...well...
...HUGE!!! |
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How huge were they?.... |
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reeeeaaaaaalllly HUGE!!! |
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We left the state park in sunshine, but hit patches of dense fog shortly after we joined up with Rte 101. Despite the fog and the wild curves, it didn't take us long to reach our destination: the wonderful and welcoming Redwood Youth Hostel... |
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| ...located directly across the highway from the Pacific Ocean... | ||
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...which we could see from our window... |
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...in an obscuring fog sort of way. OK, so we couldn't SEE it all that well from our room, but we could HEAR it! |
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Wednesday, September 14 After breakfast, we headed for the Damnation Creek Trail in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park a few miles up the road. The tops of the trees disappeared in the fog. |
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| We hadn't gotten far on the trail when we discovered the body of a beautiful black mole lying in the middle of the path. (A little investigation after we got home revealed that it was probably a Townsend's mole.) We wondered how the mole had met its end. There was no sign of any injury or struggle. | ||
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| Grotesque branches sported delicate sheets of vibrant flowing moss near dramatic fog-piercing monuments to the devastation of ancient fires. | ||
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The view from inside a charred redwood. |
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The trail became very steep, as we were warned it would, so after a few serious switchbacks, we huffed and puffed our way back up, grateful we weren't doing this hike at Crater Lake's elevation! On our way down 101 to nearby Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, we stopped at an overlook to get a new angle on the cove across from the Youth Hostel. |
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We took the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway, a 9-mile-long alternate to Rte 101, that runs through the heart of Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. This area (or time of day) wasn't as misty, so we got better views of the trees.... |
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...and the beautiful, two-toned redwood sorrel, as we walked along the Ossagon Creek Trail. |
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A short distance down the road, we encountered yet another unambiguous and extremely helpful sign directing us to....
They got that right. |
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| Downed trees gave us a greater appreciation for their astonishing size. | ||
The charred and moss-covered roots of a long-fallen redwood. |
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A tangle of old roots creates an abstract foundation for a new generation of trees on the trail to... |
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...Trillium Falls... |
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| ...which was near the open meadow at Elk Prairie where we were treated to a closeup view of a bull Roosevelt elk and his harem. | ||
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Who you lookin' at? |
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