I’m a bit delayed on this one, but a week ago I finished my California stage of the summer by going through the California Redwoods in Northern California. Directly, from the Lost Coast Trail, I drove north to Eureka, CA where HikeLighter.com‘s John Abela hosted me. John and I have never met, but I knew the Redwoods were his playground, so when I asked him for some suggestions on visiting the park, he offered to host me on my way through. Check out John’s site for the most detailed and extentive breakdown on gear you’ll find just about anywhere! Just perfectly seamless once again and I can’t believe how fluid these transitions have gone from one trip to the next these last few months. Having just completed a tough 21mi to finish up the Lost Coast Trail, I arrived a John’s around 10:30pm. He had super speedy internet, (as expected for such a high caliber blogger!) and I was up after midnight doing blog stuff after I settled in.
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| Late night after a long day finally meeting John. |
We got a more relaxed start the next morning and met Rockin and her husband Dan for breakfast. Then we all went to John’s favorite area in the Redwoods National Forest. It was Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. The lush green canyon is a very popular area that has been filmed and photographed often and had plenty of tourists. It was kinda fun to do the tourist thing and day hike in the Redwoods since there isn’t any camping in the state parks.
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| Fern Canyon |
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| Dan, Rockin, me, and John |
From Fern Canyon, we did more hiking in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and got to see some of the tall Redwoods further back where less people were hiking. We unintentionally hiked about 8mi that day. It was very nice.
Sadly, this was where my two weeks with Rockin’ came to an end. We parted ways as I head north and she and Dan took a road trip along the coast as they headed home south to Tehachapi. It was wonderful to get this time with Rockin! She will be setting off July 5th to hike the PCT in Washington with her daughter to complete her section hike of the PCT. Really exciting! Of course she’ll be blogging daily, so check it out at ladyonarock.com.
The next day, I did some more hiking in the Redwoods as I drove through Prairie Creek again. THANK YOU to John for hosting me! So great to have a community like the one we do where we can know each other through the hiking/blogging community and welcome each other like old friends. I had a great time. I had much of the hiking to myself and just loved that. I was lucky and can imagine it’s packed there on the weekends.
A couple hours north of Prairie Creek is Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. It is off the beaten path when you drive through Crescent City. There is the “scenic route” that can be taken that goes right through Jedediah Smith and it was great! A one lane road for two way traffic with huge Redwoods dictating with width of the road in many places. I chose to do an out and back hike of the Boy Scout Trail that was 3mi each way. Loved it! There is a small falls at the end, but the grand finale is the Boy Scout tree, which is on a side trail I would have walked right past if it wasn’t for another hiker telling me about it. It was HUUUGE!
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| Road through Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park |
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| Boy Scout Tree…Whoa! |
I headed on to stay with family in Grants Pass and then to Portland the next day. It has been a nice break the past week…expecially from blogging, but I did want to get this one up before I head on to Montana and the next phase (GDT!) of the summer tomorrow…more on all that is one the way…
