Redwood National Park

Having already sought out some very tall trees on the Olympic Peninsula, we could not wait to walk amongst some of the tallest trees in the world. Redwood National Park is in northern California on the Pacific coast. We spent two days exploring the park.

Tall Trees Grove

The tall trees grove is an area known to have some the tallest trees in the park and, subsequently, in the world. Redwood trees in this area tower to heights 350+ feet! Access to this area is allowed by permit only and we were lucky enough to acquire one a week before our visit. This trail is one of the more difficult to access, besides the permit we had to drive 7 miles down a dirt road to a small parking lot which thankfully the van fit into.

From the trailhead, we hiked 2 miles down 800 ft of elevation to Redwood Creek where the Tall Trees Grove lives. A one mile loop took us through the grove and we had to keep stopping at each colossal Redwood we came to and ponder its mass. After the grove loop, we hike along Redwood Creek for a bit then returned up to the trailhead.

Prairie Creek

After our Tall Trees hike, we grabbed the last available spot at Elk Prairie campground and bedded down for the evening. The next day we went to the visitor center then explored some of the nearby points of interest including Big Tree and Corkscrew Tree. Big Tree is not the tallest in the area but is known to have one of the widest trunks among other trees in the park with a diameter of 23 feet. Corkscrew Tree is truly a unique site which is saying something when you are surrounded by 300 foot tall trees! It consists of four trees intertwined in a corkscrew pattern that reach skyward together.

Takeaways

It is truly difficult to get a scale of the size of the Coastal Redwoods at this awesome park. We could tell they were enormous but since every tree is so big, we had no comparison to the “tall” pines of the Piney Woods back home. We plan to come back and hike more of the many trails that wind through these giants of nature and continue to be humbled.

Thanks for reading!

-Alan