June 30 - Hiking Fern Canyon

What we thought was just going to another hiking day turned out to be rather unusual and quite wonderful. It is kind of a long post but worth it.

We went back south to Prairie Creek Park to hike a trail called Fern Canyon. The trailhead is down a road about 10 miles off the highway. You now things are going to be a bit different when not 100 yards from the highway there is a permanent sign saying “Flood”.

Currently only about 6 inches deep but note the depth stick at the side. This was on the paved section. Then it turned into another single lane muddy dirt road. You actually had to ford a few little streams.

We had almost given the CRV a car wash after yesterday. It would have been a waste. At the time we bought the CRV, Stuart wasn’t exactly happy with Jennie’s choice but now he is much happier with it since it has 4WD, lots of clearance and we can tow it behind the RV. We are much more relaxed about going down these somewhat dicey roads than if we had a car.

On the way we passed by a herd of elk.

Note the campers in the background below. Each campsite had a big metal box to safely store their food.

Once we got to the trailhead it was almost full with about 15 cars. Again I would have expected to only see SUVs but we saw a different Mustang GT.

The trail itself is only about 1/2 mile but with a difference. You hike out a few hundred yards and then you see this.

There is no real trail. You just work your way upstream sometimes walking in the shallow water, sometimes balancing on strategically placed logs or just climbing over trees that have fallen into the canyon and it really is a canyon.

I estimated the walls were about 60 feet high, vertical and covered with ferns. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Quite a magical place.

 

Don’t miss Jennie in the picture below. She needed some brighter clothes. She wasn’t thrilled about the balancing parts of the walk but her hiking sticks helped a lot.

After a while there were some stairs up the side and you walked back along the top.

Since, as usual, the hike took longer than expected we found there was a beach close by so we had a late lunch while being watched by a friend.

 

Then it gets really weird. As we are leaving tomorrow we took one last drive through the redwoods and see this at one of the trailheads.

 

This guy from New York driving a yellow box van has wheeled out his piano and serenading anyone who is nearby.  The sign on his piano says his mission is to travel across America uniting people with his music so we sat for a while listening and staring at the giant trees.

Amazing!

June 29 - Hiking Jedediah Smith Park

How many pictures of tall trees and tiny people can a person take? It turns out a LOT. Most didn’t work out but prepare for a few more.

The day started off cloudy and cool as we headed north a bit to Jedediah Smith State Park for some more hiking. 

We hiked two trails, the Stout Trail and Boy Scout. They were both located on a muddy single lane dirt road, the first about 1 mile in and the second about 5 miles in. We expected them to be relatively empty. Wrong. Both trailheads were packed with about 10-15 cars each, all covered in mud and not just 4 wheel drive SUVs. We saw a brand new Cadillac CTS and a tricked out Mustang GT (it even had hood pins).

The Stout trail was just a short loop of about .6 miles. Lots of people because the rangers always recommend this one.

They must have had some vicious fires here because the burn marks on some of the trees were over 100 feet in the air.

Moving down the road to the next trail was an experience. The road was narrow and quite busy with lots of blind corners, some sandwiched between trees so you had no room to move over.

The second trail was much longer at about 5.5 miles to get out and back. There was a light mist falling but we didn’t feel much under the trees. We only did about 1.5 miles in before it got muddy, lots of roots and less interesting trees so we turned around. We only saw about 8 people on this trail. I guess they were all spread out due to the length.

Instead of more tall tree pictures here is Jennie the weightlifter and some rhododendrons.

After the forests, we decided to visit another cheese factory, Rumiano Cheese Co.,  which turned out to be more of a store than a cheese factory tour thing. 

On our way back to our RV, we stopped by a tourist attraction called, “Mystic Trees” where they have a humongous statue of Paul Bunyon and Babe, his blue ox in the front luring people in.  Visitors pay to go in and walk through the gardens and ride a gondola for more money.  We just walked through the gift shop and sampled fudge for free.

The Paul Bunyon statue had a speaker and a microphone. Its head, eyes and hands also moved. It was fun listening as he surprised people and had conversations with them as they entered the park. Even the adults would look up and talk to him. The guy was quite funny, even at the end of what must be a long day. We never did figure out where he actually was. 

June 28 – Crescent City

It started raining heavily last night and didn’t stop till almost noon. The campground owner said we got about 1 1/2 inches. With the rain and the hike yesterday it was very late before we got out of bed.

Rather than hike in the mud we decided to check out the local large town. The owner recommended a few places to see. Most of them didn’t work out as, when we got there, a thick fog had descended. 

On looking back it might have interesting being among the trees in the fog.

The owner did say the magic word “Walmart” so Jennie spent some time there stocking up, while Stuart went to the visitor’s center  to see if they had anything new.

The owner also recommended a fish and chip restaurant by the harbour so we went for dinner. It was very busy (a good sign) and we got one of the last tables before the lineup started. We had a great crab sandwich and a good grilled fish and chips.

Kind of a slow day but we need those every once in a while. It seems that staying at each place at least 5 nights allows us to not feel we are missing things if we take a day off.

June 27 - Hiking Prairie Creek State Park

It was a great day for hiking, bright sunshine, no wind and temps in the high teens.

We looked online for recommended hikes. The best was about 19 kilometers. Not ready for that length yet, we did a shorter one at almost 10 kilometers but the longest for us on this trip. It was a loop trail that started low, climbed 600 feet up a ridge, followed the ridge, climbed down and then follow a creek back, all the way surrounded by the giant redwoods. We are not fast and we stop and stare a lot so it took us about 4 1/2 hours.

Hiking in these trees is tough in that you want to spend the entire time staring upwards while walking on narrow root strewn path on the edge of a steep ridge.

 

We see faces, animal shapes and crazy things staring back at us as we wander through the trail.  Words and pictures do not do justice to the sensation of how small we are compared to the size and stature of these trees.  We were just in awe the entire time.

Amazingly, once again we are alone on the trail until the last couple of kilometers when we encountered about 20 others doing other loops, most of which were on a guided tour led by a park ranger.

The pictures today are not great. The camera had a hard time with the bright sunshine up above and the dark shadows in the tree.

It was weird to see some tree that seemed like burned out hulks that you could walk inside and then look up and see a healthy tree.

Our lunch spot.

Some interesting fungus.

We came to one spot where a tree had recently fallen down and it looked like it literally exploded.

Gotta have one of these pictures.

It was a long hike for us.  We were exhausted when we got back so we collapsed and had a nap before dinner.

June 26 - To Klamath, California

Everyone said that since we are this close we had to see the redwoods. So we are off for 5 days to Redwoods National Park and the surrounding state parks before we return to Oregon.

View Larger Map

Before we left we watched this dredging ship working by the jetty.

Notice the surfer in the foreground, below.

At the state border we are stopped by the Department of Food & Agriculture for an inspection.  They asked if we have cherries or oranges. We raided the fridge to show what we had but nothing got taken.  According to the slip of paper we got as proof of inspection, they are concerned about invasive species.

We are finding that you really don’t have to reserve ahead for a campsite unless you want a state park on the weekend. There are so many RV parks all along this highway (although some look very dumpy) we would have had no trouble just showing up. The one Stuart picked, Mystic Forest RV Park, had great online reviews but on getting here it is pretty basic. It’s not a big deal as we really just need a parking spot and it is more the location being close to the things we want to see that counts.

Reading online, it seems the park with the best trails is Prairie Creek Redwoods State park so we headed down to the visitors center. Since we are at the park early enough, we decide to walk a trail called The Nature Trail, a short interpretive walk through the forest.

Prepare for lots of pictures of giant trees in the next few day, although pictures do not really convey the feeling of being there. Note Jennie on the trail below.

 

There are a lot more people using the trails in this park, which is a huge contrast to solitude we enjoyed on trails in Oregon. Each of the trailheads actually have cars parked at them. We will see what it is like tomorrow when we do a longer hike.

June 25 – Back to Samuel Boardman State Park

The weather here is difficult to figure out. Yesterday it was cool but not too windy at the RV; however when we got to the hiking trails it was gusting so wildly we were literally blown over sometimes while standing in the open areas of the mountains. Today it was gusting at the RV so we prepared for the cooler temperatures but it was great hiking weather, mid teens and bright sunshine and very little wind at the park.

We returned to this park to visit the points of interest we missed yesterday. We started at House Rock which is a high viewpoint with views up and down the coast. We decided to hike the 1 mile to the next point, Cape Ferrelo, along the Oregon Coast Trail. The path was mostly through tall Sitka spruce trees along a steep hill falling into the ocean. Lots of ups and downs.

You can see a little bridge below us in the picture.

As we got to the cape it opened up into a wide grassland.

As we walked out to the end of the cape to have lunch we noticed a bunch a people ahead of us.

It turned out it was a wedding party trouping out for pictures all in their suits and dresses and HIGH HEELS.  It was at least 1/4 mile of narrow dirt trail to get out there.

We sat in the grass on the side of the cape for lunch. The picture below shows where our car is (ie where we have to get back to).

Hiking back, the walk seemed shorter.

We met another couple which does not happen very often. They had driven from San Diego and just had a short ti me here.  We gave them some pointers on what was good to see.

The last section up to the car was a bit of a killer.

Next we drove to Long Ranch Beach which had seen on our hike.

Jennie wanted to do some more beachcombing as this is likely last beach we will see for about 3 weeks. Stuart tried the water (unbearably cold) and then sat on a rock shaped like a lounge chair to relax.

It was another wonderful day of great hiking, beautiful scenery, super weather and good times.