California - Day 24 - Redwood Highway to Crescent City

Crescent City/Redwoods KOA, Crescent City

Thursday, 24 March 2022

On our early walk around last night's campground in Benbow, I think we surprised some raccoons - at least, they're my guess.  Dext got really excited about a critter he could smell but we couldn't see (he couldn't either), and on our later walk I saw that trash had been pulled out of a trash can and strewn all around the ground.  

It doesn't feel to me like we're particularly out in the country, but from an animal's point of view, I guess we are.

today's route

Because last night's campground was almost on top of the town of Garberville (pop. 818), I drove through just to get an idea of what was here.  I passed the Eel River Cafe and through its windows could see an old-fashioned small-town cafe.  It looked wonderful and I was really sorry I'd already had breakfast or I'd've stopped just to enjoy the ambiance.  Local gas stations were selling gas for $5.99/gallon.

The road followed the Eel River for many miles, and between the river and the mountains in the neighborhood the road was even more twisty than it looks on the map above.

At the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, I pulled off the highway into the park.  I just drove a short distance there but can tell you it's got some pretty gorgeous trees.

I started seeing signs for Avenue of the Giants Scenic Alternative.  It turns out to be a 31-mile drive through this state park and includes several attractions, such as a couple of drive-through trees and the Founders Tree, which was for a while designated the World's Tallest Known Tree at 346.1'.  Others have since remeasured and come up with different figures and think it was incorrectly measured in the first place.

California doesn't despair, however, because it can still claim having the world's tallest tree - the Hyperion, at 380.81'.  It's in the Redwood National Park (where I'll be going later today).  In fact, California brags about its trifecta: the world's tallest tree (Hyperion), the world's largest tree (General Sherman), and the world's oldest tree (Methuselah).  Not that the state can take actual credit for growing these trees, but it's still definitely something to brag about.

Anyway, about that "scenic alternative" bit - I'm sure it's a wonderful drive but I have to say that the main route, which I took, wasn't exactly a blight.  I saw huge evergreens, mostly redwoods, growing alongside the lovely Eel River (must have been named because of its twists and turns, not its appearance which is really pretty).  It's been designated a Wild and Scenic River by both the state and federal governments.  The Eel River, by the way, is the 3rd largest watershed entirely in CA and flows for 196 miles.  Its very size makes it even more remarkable to me to still be so untamed.

Low clouds covered the tops of trees on the hills/mountains for much of the drive, but it contributed to the picturesqueness, rather than being a hazard.  The road included a 7% grade (there really were a lot of hills).  And I started thinking that every bridge in the state must have been designated a memorial to someone.  And CA has a lot of bridges.

I passed small (Alton, with 275 residents) and large (Fortuna, with 12,516) towns and then came into Eureka.  With 25,936 residents, it's easily the largest town in the area - in fact, the largest coastal city between San Francisco, CA, and Portland, OR.  The gas wasn't cheaper, though - I had to fork over $5.99 because I needed the fuel and hadn't found anyplace at all cheaper all day.

I drove through Old Town Eureka, an area of 154 buildings from, mainly, the Victorian era, and the whole neighborhood is on the National Register of Historic Places.  It's a very attractive area, as you might imagine, right along the waterfront, also as you might imagine in those original towns.

College of the Redwoods is here, as well as a branch of Cal State Polytechnic Univ.  Eureka's an attractive town, with a boardwalk along its waterfront, where a company offers harbor cruises.  I saw a large marina including some commercial fishing boats, and stacks of hundreds of crab pots.  The local high school is Home of the Loggers - meaning, I guess, that many people value the area's trees for something besides scenic beauty.

We stopped here for lunch and for a walk, and I drove around town a bit.  Despite the price of gas, I liked it here.

Leaving town the road ran at sea level, right alongside the sea, which is how I know.  And farther along the road at Arcata, pop. 15,700, the highway continued at water level.  This is the home of Humboldt State University.  Here are 2 views of some of that well-known coastal California beauty.

Famed US-101 is called the Redwood Highway along here, and it's hard to beat the scenery.

I heard on the radio that the Yurok Tribe is releasing several California Condors into the wild in the Redwood State and National Forests.  They were put on the endangered list in 1967 and, in 1987, became officially extinct when the last wild birds were captured.  Except that's not as sad a story as it might seem because by capturing them, rather than waiting until they'd all died out, scientists have been allowed to try to continue the species.  And those efforts are bearing fruit right now, as the Yuroks, who consider these birds sacred, are putting them back out into the wild in hopes they can be reestablished.  I do indeed wish them well.

A road sign warned me of "sharp curves next 3 miles - reduce speed" right before I came to a 6% grade.  Not a great combination.

Several times today I passed signs saying I was entering or leaving a Tsunami Hazard Zone.  I wondered about this and looked it up and learned that tsunamis aren't common in CA but have been known to cause multiple deaths.  Consequently, the state has designated these inundation areas with maps to help people get to safe areas in the event of danger.  And I have to say there's certainly a good chunk of the state's population that's living near the ocean.

The Redwood National and State Parks include 1 national park and 3 state parks that are cooperatively managed.  I couldn't usually tell from the signs which one I was in, which is why I can't say where I drove today, except that I was in the .  There are several drives into these parks, and I chose one that was about 10 miles long.  I tried to take photos but was hampered both by the size of the trees and by the bright sunshine that kept hogging the picture.

These 2 photos are of the same tree, with the
top one being higher up than the lower one,
which is a photo of the base of the tree.
Maybe you can tell how huge these things are.

There's nothing to show how huge
these trees really are - but
they're certainly beautiful.

Note both the relative sizes of car vs. trees,
and that the one tree is growing right at
the roadside.

The park service was thoughtful enough to provide places to pull off the road fairly often, each one fairly close to especially large trees, which is the only reason I was able to get these photos.  The road certainly didn't have a shoulder or any other possible place to pull over, so I was glad of these.

A sign told me elk frequently crossed the road in this area.  But maybe not right now?  I didn't see any, at any rate.

Moving down US-101, we came to the town of Klamath (pop. 600+), which touts its "Tour Thru Tree."  I didn't bother but I suppose others do.  This town, by the way, is part of the Yurok Indian Reservation.  The Klamath River, which the town is sited on, seems to have plenty of water in it, so maybe the drought isn't as bad in this part of the state as in the interior/farm country.

A sign told me Welcome to Del Norte County - The Redwood Gate to the Golden State.  You might be able to see on the route map above that the Redwood National Park continues for a long way up the coast, and then moves inland near Crescent City with separate redwood state parks.  That park ranger back at Kings Canyon National Park told me the coastal redwoods thrived on coastal fog/mist, and I guess that's what I'm seeing.  

And sure enough, the sun disappeared and the clouds came back down.  But it was nice having the bright sun while I was in the redwoods, even if it made picture-taking harder.

Crescent City, pop. 6,673 in 2020 (down by almost 1,000 from 2010), lies at 44' elevation.  It seems to be a pleasant enough place, but by now I was pretty tired and went straight to the campground.