Tall Trees

A perfect weekend getaway

When it comes to weekend getaways, Jennifer and I are somewhere between being young and getting old: Yes, we will remember to bring a sweater, but no, we won't book ahead.

It was Saturday. Neither of us had to be anywhere until Tuesday night. How far could we get away in 72 hours?

Far enough, it turned out.

We loaded the truck with gear and groceries and rolled into Saturday night traffic. A little after 9 pm, we were creeping through the construction on the San Rafael bridge. Somewhere north of Novato, the traffic dwindled.

About 1 am we pulled into the near-empty campground at Hickey-Standish State Park. Here Highway 101 veers a few hundred feet away from a creek. The resulting sliver of space is divided into parking-stall-sized campsites, each separated from the other by a couple of skinny trees. We pulled into one of the spaces and crawled into the back of the truck. Through the trees, we could see the traffic on 101. But the intermittent noise was no match for the warmth of our sleeping bags and the lateness of the hour. We were soon asleep.

The point of this driving-in-the-night madness is to get the packing-up-and-leaving part over with, and then to awaken in a new setting, anticipating a new day's adventures.

Which we did.

At eight o'clock the next morning, we pulled back onto the highway, rested but groggy. We got take-out cappuccinos at the first joint that was open and sipped them as we wound through the Avenue of the Giants.

Back on 101, we admired the clearcuts before stopping in Scotia, Pacific Lumber Company's company town, festooned with official “Support Our Troops” signs.

We drove on through Eureka, past Arcata, and stopped in Trinidad (pop. 320) for Sunday breakfast. There was a wait, so we walked down the 92 steps from the fisherman's memorial to the beach. We looked at the seastacks and across the harbor before jogging back up.

After breakfast, we continued north to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. A new bypass carries 101 around the park now. It's quieter, in the campground and visitor's center, than it was in our last visit in 1992. We chose a site next to the babbling creek and thought about what to do with our afternoon.

Here's why we had to come back after eleven years: At Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, the meadow where the elk congregate may be in full sun — it's often very hot there in summer. From there you can step, immediately, into the cool and shady old growth redwood forest and begin your walk to the sea. After a few miles of gaping at the giant trees, rustic bridges carry you across a series of deep, narrow chasms. After four miles, the trail descends into one of these, and vertical walls, dripping with moisture and adorned with ferns, rise 50 feet above your head. Too soon, the canyon ends, and you emerge onto dunes and a broad beach.

If you're lucky, you'll also find elk here. They like to hang out in the little meadows at the foot of the cliffs.

We added to this a 2-mile walk south along the tideline, where we exchanged curious stares with a pair of sea lions, and a return leg along a different trail, which — except that it lacks a canyon — was even more spectacular than the way in. Clintonia and Trillium graced the paths beneath the redwoods.

Even as we neared the elk meadow again, after eleven miles of walking, we were still stopping to admire the flora, now glowing in the light of a summer's eve.

The campground was crowded when we returned, but not enough to spoil a late dinner, which we enjoyed, feet up, with a view of bats hurtling over and around the creek.

And we still had 48 hours left.

Monday morning, we packed everything back into the truck: We might return to that site — we'd paid for two nights — or we might not. We drove back south to Orick and the Visitors Center set up there for the state and national redwood parks. We talked to a ranger and got a pass and lock combination allowing us to visit the Tall Trees Grove.

The walk down to the grove is only about a mile, but fairly steep.

The Tall Trees Grove is on the shore of Redwood Creek, site of a geomorphic and ecological disaster. In the 1950s and 1960s, logging of the old growth in this watershed caused massive erosion of the hillsides, filling the creekbed with sediment and raising the level of the creek by several feet. Concern about possible devastation of the Tall Trees Grove — then thought to include the tallest tree in the world — led to the purchase of most of the watershed and its incorporation into Redwood National Park. Since then, the hillsides have been mostly stabilized through massive restoration work.

Old redwoods, wherever they are, inspire awe, but in this place, one's capacity for awe seems overwhelmed. The ground here is flat floodplain, and regular. The widely spaced trees rise from it in such mass — there is no hope of contemplating their height, they simply disappear somewhere overhead — that comprehension is impossible, and one is just there, sensing the place but apprehending neither the forest nor the trees.

The broad sandbars and gravel bars on the creek — which may take hundreds of years to wash downstream — were hot, too bright, and inhospitable on this sunny day, but walking upstream a ways we found a shady spot for lunch. A bald eagle flew by, low, following the creek upstream. After lunch and a long rest we doffed clothes and took a very quick dip in the cold stream before the steep climb back to the truck.

Back at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, we took the Coastal Drive, which winds on bluffs high above the Pacific. After driving its length, we returned to a particularly inviting pull-off, where we set up chairs and spent an undisturbed afternoon and evening watching the sun set and the stars come out over the ocean.

Tuesday morning, at a picnic table alongside the elk meadow, we set up breakfast and dawdled before leaving. It was too soon to go back, really. We stopped after a few miles and walked a barrier beach — the ocean on one side, a lagoon on the other — in the morning sun.

But after that, there was nothing to be done for it. Only stops for coffee, lunch, and afternoon ice cream would break up the drive south.

Text, images, design, CSS all by Dan Cloak. Comments? email me!