This year we decided to make the long trek to the Redwoods. I went as a teen and due to a Dramamine mishap, I slept through the majority of it. So this was pretty much new to all of us!
There is a lot of information out there and I did a ton of research, so I decided to record it here in case anyone is interested. It might save you some time.
First of all, we live in Utah and decided the super long road trip through the desert during June wasn't that appealing with 4 kiddos, so we utilized our frequent flyer miles, found a killer deal and flew the family to Sacramento. Portland and San Francisco are about the same distance, we just found the best deals on air and rental cars in Sacramento.
I used an app called Roadtrippers to compile my route and mileage. Each number is where we stayed overnight. In Crescent City (#4) we stayed two nights, for a total of 7, before heading back. I had packed a soft sided cooler so we didn't need to eat out for every meal. Before heading out we stopped at a grocery store and loaded up. It was also where we were introduced to all the new fun taxes and charges that the state of California likes to tack on. Wahoo!
The drive to the coast, from Woodland to Fort Bragg was really pretty, it goes through lots of farmland, vineyards, and orchards. Then starts rising into mountains, and past Clearlake. The last hour or so in Jackson State Forest, it wound around a lot and gave us a little taste of the Redwoods. We stopped and ate sandwiches from the car at a roadside pullout that seemed like it may have been a homeless city at night, which was not great, but we were quick.
DAY 1 - Road to FORT BRAGG
It was a cloudy, windy day, but the Pacific Ocean was still amazing! Our first stop after checking into the hotel was Glass Beach. This is near Pomo Bluffs (gorgeous stop for a windy picnic) where the locals used to throw their trash into the ocean (like a hundred years ago). After the constant beating, the ocean pounded everything up. The only thing left are little pebbles from all the glass shards. Very unique and cool!
It also has great tidal pools to explore here. And just to the North is a cool little bridge and sandy beach at MacKerricker State Park, as well as the Fort Bragg Coastal Trail that goes along the coast past all of these.
*Just a note, not all state and national parks charge an entrance fee, but if they do ($8) you can use it at multiple locations on the same day. Which since there are so many here, we did that a few times.
The Guest House Museum was on our hit list, but it's only open like 2 hours a day. So we stopped by the outside and got a pic with this HUGE tree slice instead.
We were pretty excited to get out and actually into the forest, so we headed to Russian Gulch State Park and decided to do the waterfall hike there. It was about 2.4 miles each way and took us a little over 2 hours, but honestly, soooooo worth it! Nothing else could have immersed us so entirely into the woods. It was a fairly easy small trail that took us past things we didn't see anywhere else. I half expected gnomes to pop out and walk with us.
We barely made it back before sun down, which would have been quite an experience, so I'm glad we timed it like we did. The kids were exhausted, but proud when I told them how far they'd gone.
DAY 2 - Road to FORTUNA
My husband is nuts. We had rented the biggest SUV he could find and was determined to drive it through. I hopped out thinking I would take a picture, then he would back out. Nope. He literally squeaked though. As in the folded in mirror on one side was making a loud squeaking sound and the whole event drew quite a large crowd complete with applause after he made it through.
He said it was the slowest moving adrenaline rush he'd ever had.
Next we drove the Avenue of the Giants, which runs parallel to the main highway, but you get to see the small towns and beauty that the highway bypasses.
Our plan had been to hit the Loleta Cheese Factory for lunch (from Diners, Drive-In's & Dive's), but had underestimated how long Highway 1 would take, so about 2-3 pm we pulled up to our lunch stop. It was worth the snacking, cause those were seriously tasty cheese sandwiches ever!
We then hit the city of Eureka, which I did remember from my childhood visit. It wasn't the same though. We stopped at a park, but felt that leaving the car to walk the trail was unwise. So we found the Mansion House, snapped a pic and the harbor for a pic. But I'll be honest, this was not a family friendly town. The amount of vagabonds seemed to out number the regular population. This was probably the biggest disappointment of the trip since I had planned to do more in this town, but really couldn't wait to leave it.
Fortuna was actually backtracking about 20 minutes, but after seeing the larger town of Eureka, I was so glad we weren't staying there. Fortuna has a charming old main street where we ate at an amazing Mexican Restaurant (Taco Loco) and had Froyo for dessert. Then headed to another cool city park to get the wiggles out.
DAY 3 - Road to CRESCENT CITY
This day is where we would experience the bulk of the Redwoods. Now, if you don't know, the actual national park is pretty small. There are many state parks all clustered around together to make one big area of Redwoods. Our first stop was Patrick's Point State Park. Boy am I glad we stopped. Short, but AMAZING hikes that all my kids were willing and excited to go on because the views were like WOWIE!
We pulled into the Patrick's Point parking lot, which had a few different hikes start from there. The most obvious was Wedding Rock, so my kids kind of took off to this lookout first.
That black rock in the background is the actual Patrick's Point.
Next we came back and went to Patrick's Point. The trails to each were almost as awesome as the views themselves.
This is the view of Wedding Rock from Patrick's Point.
We hopped in the car and stopped at the next parking lot down the road, which had this amazing view of Agate Beach below. There was a trail head to it, but it was pretty steep and I knew the kids would have a hard time coming back up, so we decided to find another way, by car, down.
We had to go out of the park and through a little town, but we did it! And just in time for the sun to come out. Turns out this was actually Big Lagoon Beach. There was a long sand bar between the ocean and a lagoon where we played, picnicked and hunted for sea treasures.
Dez's first real taste of the ocean!
Just up the road was our next stop, Lady Bird Johnson Grove, where the Redwoods were dedicated. It's a meandering trail through some absolutely huge trees! This was one of the few places we saw other people. The Redwoods in general feel like their all yours. No where near the crowds that other national parks have.
According to our five ear old and the picture on the trail map, the tree hugging photo was a must.
Now our next stop was quite an adventure. You take Division Road out to Fern Canyon. The ranger at the park entrance warned us that there are streams you have to drive through to get there, one of which was about a foot deep. My husband was stoked.
It is 8 miles on a dirt road, which was well maintained, but not too wide so there's lots of pulling to the side to let cars come the opposite way. The drive is through redwood trees all the way to the coast where there is a sandy beach (Gold Beach) with lots of Roosevelt Elk. Simply beautiful.
Fern Canyon is an absolute MUST SEE in my opinion. It's like nothing I've ever experienced. It's a mile long canyon with a stream going down it to the ocean, similar to the narrows, but the walls are covered in lush green ferns. There are plenty of obstacles to keep the kids busy and of course walking through the water was pretty much the best part for them.
Steve wasn't aware that he needed water shoes and did not want to get his new shoes wet. So he somehow made it up and back without getting wet, but it was not easy. He took it as a challenge and succeeded.
We finally rolled into Crescent city in time for dinner. Now if we had driven straight there it would have taken less than 2 hours. However, I knew that the majority of our stops were on this leg of the trip and it ended up taking a total of 6-7 hours.
We had some spendy hot dogs at the North Coast Grill and headed to a park in town to wear the kids out before bed, then walked the pier at sunset.
DAY 4 - CRESCENT CITY (2)
We had driven past a few things near the end of the drive the day before, so we back tracked to The Trees of Mystery the next morning. We debated whether to spend the money on the entrance fee, which seemed a bit much for the whole family to see trees, but we decided to go for it. It was SO worth it! This had so many unique trees all in one spot and some really cool carvings. It's also where the famous Paul Bunyan resides. Then there was the tram to the top of the mountain called the Sky Trail that was the icing on the cake!
The first thing we did when we arrived in Crescent City was check with our hotel about the tide schedule. We really wanted to do Battery Point Lighthouse, but it's only open 12-4 if it's low tide. Fortunately the day we were there we caught the last day it would be open. Then it closed for 3 days while the tide was too high during business hours.
Tours are every 15-20 minutes, so we had to wait in the beautiful sunlight at this gorgeous location. My littles were still ornery about waiting.
The isthmus that connects it to the mainland. View from the top of the lighthouse.
We had lunch at Pebble beach, but since I made the sandwiches in the car, there were no pictures taken there.
After that we headed to Howland Hill Road in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. Another dirt road that promised great things. We were taking it to Stout Grove, where a Star Wars scene featuring the Ewoks, from Return of the Jedi was filmed. My boys all fell asleep and stayed in the car, which is too bad because this and Fern Canyon (both dirt road locations) were my favorite places of the trip!
This grove is in a flood plain, which due to the periodic flooding, Redwoods are the only trees that survive here. It's just ferns and low growth with super tall Redwoods. Probably the best views of the trees themselves. Plus it's like a huge playground with all the horizontal logs to climb on.
After that we headed back to town because everyone want to hit the beach.
Crescent City Beach is a pretty spectacular one.
One of the charms of this city were all the murals.
They are everywhere here, including in our hotel.
There were so many things to do around Crescent city, that we had to spend more than one night here. There also happened to be an LDS chapel there so I made sure one of the days we were here was Sunday. It's always fun attending in a new place. For some wonderful reason my kids were the most well behaved I've ever seen them during sacrament meeting.
After church we headed back inland. It was the longest road trip of the trip, a little over 4 hours. We went from a sunny 65 degrees coast to a burning 108 degrees. Literally it was burning, apparently during the week Clearlake had a wild fire start, which was huge and out of control, and Redding itself had 5 out around the city burning. Two of my kids were very uneasy with the whole setting.
After hotel swimming during the hottest part of the day, we set out to explore Redding and the Sundial Bridge.
The only relief from the heat was if we were within about 10 feet of the Sacramento River.
The next morning we decided to try to beat the heat by heading to the Shasta Lake Caverns. it's a pretty cool little setup. The ticket price includes a boat ride across the lake, a bus ride up the mountain and then the tour of the caves. It was the right choice for triple degree weather.
And finally we arrived in Sacramento. We swam a bit more at the hotel the drove around the city to check out cool architecture and such before heading home the next morning.
Honestly this was the best trip! I really wouldn't have changed a thing, except maybe the speed of the wind at the coast :) We spent a whole week at the Northern California coast for the same price it would have cost to just buy tickets to get into Disneyland for three days. Money well spent.
I hope this inspires you to get out on your own adventures!
