Redwood National Park & Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California, June 2014
Hiking the Redwoods in Northern California, a Road Scholar Program
Click on the map above to see a larger version. (Google Maps)
In the second week of June we attended our first Road Scholar Program, Hiking the Redwoods in Northern California, coordinated and hosted by Carol and Lynn Unser, owners of Coastal Journeys Unlimited, Inc. Lynn is a 5th generation Oregonian and a former logger and fisherman; he had numerous colorful and educational stories to tell of the old days of logging. Carol was a wealth of knowledge too; she came from a background in academia teaching archeology, paleontology, and coastal natural history at various institutions in Georgia and Oregon. The other instructors were Joseph Calbreath, a climatologist and meteorologist from Eugene, Jenny Hanson and Jerry and Gisela Rohde, local naturalists and historians, all very experienced, and I might add, excellent, Road Scholar instructors.
Our base of operations was Eureka where we stayed at the Red Lion Hotel, that proved to be quite comfortable. We were on Lynn and Carol's bus each morning at 8:30 for the first hike of the day. At noon, more or less, we had a nice sandwich lunch before we headed out for the afternoon's walk. One day we had a special lunch at a seafood restaurant in Trinidad. In the late afternoon we returned to the hotel in time to clean up a bit and, for some of us, a quick stop by the bar on the way to the conference room where dinner was served. In the evenings there were presentations by Jenny Hanson on the redwood forest natural and cultural history and the Humboldt Wildlife Care Center on its work to recuperate injured animals and return them to the wild. The first night we had dinner at the historic Samoa Cookhouse in Samoa across Humboldt Bay from Eureka.
We drove up the day before in order to explore Eureka and its environs, including the little Victorian town of Ferndale. To our surprise the day we arrived was their monthly art festival in Old Town Eureka. So after dinner we wondered about the shops and enjoyed the music.
We then spent the next four days in the sage hands of our instructors visiting the redwood parks exploring the old growth forests of the Coast Redwood (Sequoia Sempervirens). We also spent one morning at the Lanphere Dunes at the north end of Humboldt Bay to see the results of years of work to restore to the dunes their native ecology.
We then drove down to Fort Bragg for two days and, on our way, stopped to walk a couple of additional trails along the Avenue of the Giants.
The sites we visited are plotted on the map to the left that I modified from Google. (Click on the map to see a larger version.)
Please enjoy the pictures below. To see the full image, click on a thumbnail. To navigate through the images, click on NEXT or PREV to move to the next image or to go back.
Eureka and Ferndale: Eureka was the center of operations for our Road Scholar Adventure "Hiking the Redwoods in Northern California". We arrived on the first Saturday of the month and to our surprise there is an arts festival on that night each month, so we had dinner on the boardwalk and wandered about the shops (that stayed open late) in the old part of town. We ate a very nice dinner at the Bayfront, a Sushi and Italian restaurant, of all things, on the boardwalk and took a walk about town. It must have been prom night since the local kids were all dressed up and posing for pictures. A couple of days later, with our tour group, we drove to the William Carson Mansion in Old Town. Carson made his fortune logging redwoods in the mid-19th century and completed his mansion in 1886.
On Sunday we took a walk about the picturesque little town of Ferndale that is known for its well preserved Victorian buildings. While we were there some special event took place at the Portugese Hall Association (see picture above) that was preceded by a parade.
Redwood National Park, Humboldt Redwoods State Park & Avenue of the Giants: On our first and fourth days, our group walked several easy trails within the Prarie Creek and Humboldt Redwoods State Parks (and the Avenue of the Giants, a part of Humboldt Redwood State Park that parallels Highway 101 and the South Fork of the Eel River south of Eureka). We would return the day after our class ended to explore the latter a bit further on our own as we drove home. See more pictures below.
The Samoa Cookhouse & My Birthday: The first evening we ate at the famous Samoa Roadhouse, a former logging camp cookhouse. On this day I celebrated my birthday, which was duly noted and resulted in a piece of cake with two candles and a free beer purchased by one of our fellow classmates.
Lanphere Dunes: On the second morning we did some easy dune walking, first on a stretch of unrestricted beach on Humboldt Bay, then in the recently restored habitat of the Lanphere Dunes. Lanphere Dunes is part of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. It is an example of a near-pristine native dune habitat; access is restricted and only open to guided tours. The techniques pioneered at Lanphere Dunes is now being applied to other dune restoration projects in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. According to Wikipedia, "The dune complex consists of the waveslope, foredune, herbaceous and woody swales, coniferous and riparian forest, freshwater swamp, freshwater marsh, brackish marsh, salt marsh, and intertidal mudlfats." They forgot to mention the mosquitoes. Actually, they weren't too bad and only plagued us through the coniferous forest that we traversed on our way to the strand. Our tour was led by the delightful and knowledgeable Jenny Hanson, a local naturalist.
Elk River Trail (of the Headwaters Forest Reserve, Humboldt County): In the afternoon we walked the first mile, a paved section of an old logging road, of the Elk River Trail that parallels the South Fork of the Elk River. The trail goes on another couple of miles to a small grove of old growth redwoods, but we didn't walk that far. Rather, we stayed on the paved road in the second growth forest. Jenny Hanson again served as our tour guide.
I saw a number of interesting berries along the Patrick's Point trails and just had to take their pictures:
Patrick's Point State Park: On our third day, we walked some of the trails along the bluffs overlooking the ocean and through a forest of spruce, hemlock, pine, fir and red alder, and explored a recreated Yurok Village.
Humboldt Redwoods State Park & Avenue of the Giants (Revisited): On our way to Fort Bragg we stopped again in the Humboldt Redwoods State Park to walk the Rockefeller Loop trail and the Big Tree Area, and to stop at the visitor center. And then it was off to Fort Bragg for the last two nights of our trip. We wished we had given ourselves more time to walk the trails alone. It was still early in June and we didn't once see a crowd.
Mendocino Botanical Gardens, Fort Bragg: We spent a day in Fort Bragg and visited the Botanical Gardens to the south of town. According to the Fort Bragg website, the botanical gardens are Fort Bragg's number one attraction. There are numerous manicured gardens connected by meandering paths and then a half mile trail through a forest of Monterey Pines to ocean bluffs. The gardens are fronted by a nursery, and I imagine you can buy just about any type of plant you see in the gardens.
