Redwoods, CA

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Heading up the 101 which runs a bit inland from the coast we came across the "Avenue of the Giants" drive where you drive through the spectacular redwood trees. We got the last spot at the Humboldt Redwoods State Park which was surrounded by ferns and tall trees. It was beautiful. 

view in front of our campsite, there is a road there but you can only tell when a car drives past
Our aim was to get to the Redwoods National Park which is further up the road and we had rung and they said they had plenty of sites. I think we were given the wrong number as the Elk Prairie campground was reservation only and booked out. 


There were sites at Mill Creek State Park and we got a lovely secluded site but the park is not really amongst the redwoods. Still in pursuit of better redwoods we headed north, they had three sites left at the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. I’m not quite sure what happened to the National Park, it seems to be melded in with the various State Parks. We got a site just as we wanted, nestled in amongst the redwoods. We had a short walk out the back of our campsite down to the Smith River which should have had a walkway over the river connecting it to the other side where all the walks were. It wasn’t there, so we drove around and did the Howard Hill Road road drive, doing a couple of walks along the way. We were advised to do the Boy Scout Trail which was 2.8 miles in, that’s 9kms return! I don’t think so. We drove down Miller's and did one of the walks there too. 



The following morning we went back again, it’s such a lovely drive, you would never get sick of it. We had seen a lot of cars parked at Stout Grove trail the day before so I wanted to have a look. It was a lovely walk with lots of ground ferns (that were so popular in the seventies) and tall redwoods. A number had fallen over exposing their massive root base. Oh, to be able to slice a bit off and polish it! This walk took you directly across the river from our campsite. But of course no walkway over the river. We thought we would do a little bit of the Scout trail and it all seemed to be the same and not as nice as the first one, so we were quite happy to abandon it. 


Location: Redwood National and State Parks, California, USA

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