Day 6 - Redwood National Forest

Redwood National Forest

First off, let me say that you’ve never truly seen trees until you’ve visited the Redwood National Forest. The coastal Redwoods are amazing. The older growth Redwoods are anywhere from 250 to over a thousand years old. The newer growth Redwoods are 250 years and younger. Either way, that adds up to some big trees.

After leaving Crater Lake in the a.m, we stopped briefly at Grant’s Pass for some breakfast and Dutch Bros coffee and hit the road. The Redwood National Park runs several miles along Rte 199, and we stopped at a couple different spots. At the first stop, we were amazed at the size of the giant trees, and took a ton of pictures. The second place we stopped was called Big Tree Wayside. And yes, there was a very large tree. The forest itself was beautiful and very quite. It was a peaceful place to visit. We found a fallen tree and climbed up the trunk and walked across to the top.
The forest was filled with clover, hemlock, and other lush green plants. We agreed it reminded us of the scenes in Return of the Jedi in the Ewok Village (yes we are dorks.) We followed a trail for awhile, and found evidence that either an elk or a cougar had been on the path shortly before us. We were hoping it was an elk.

We found our way back to the trailhead without having any cougar encounters. Satisified with the number of big Redwoods we saw, we proceeded to Patrick’s Point State Park for camping. The campground was very pretty and although didn’t have as many Redwoods as we had seen, there were plenty of Douglas firs and other trees. The park is also on a bit of a peninsula, and has a beach called Agate Beach. We went hunting for Agates, which are semi-precious stones, but we didn’t really know what we were looking for. We ended up with some neat looking rocks and a cool piece of driftwood anyways.

We settled down at our campsite, and planned on waking up early for our drive to Sonoma. Can’t wait for some wine!!

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