After we spent a few hours walking our butts off in the permitted area of the Tall Trees Grove, we realized it wouldn’t be long before the rain in the forecast popped out to say hello.

• Redwood Creek Overlook
• Ah-Pah Interpretive Trail
• Hiouchi Visitor Center
• Crescent City, California
• Finding home for the night

The first little pull off after leaving Tall Trees is this one – the Redwood Creek Overlook.

Redwood Creek Overlook

“The forest to your right is the one of the largest remaining stands of old-crowth redwoods – more than 9,000 acres. Its mature trees range from 200 to 1,500 years in age, and some are more than 360 feet (110m) in height.“

We originally planned to chill at the picnic tables here and eat a post-hike snack with this view, but of course we couldn’t stick around once it started coming down. We fangirled over the Park Ranger real quick – be still my heart – and then headed toward more cover.

Ah-Pah Interpretive Trail

Geocaching is a great way to waste some time while waiting for weather to cooperate. We never would have visited this little trail otherwise. This one follows an old redwood logging road which was rehabbed by NPS in the late 1990’s.

The cool thing about being on lower ground in the redwoods is that you have a bazillion thousands-year old umbrellas all around you.

Touching the redwoods when you get the chance is a must.

There are so many areas where you can see that a bunch of other people have touched the same place and gradually smoothed it down over time. Solidarity. All humans are the same. Makes me smile.

I usually wouldn’t have done the socks + Tevas fashion statement (sike yes I would), but after hiking those miles at Tall Trees and finally releasing my toes from the jail of my hiking boots – there was no going back.

And here’s what we came for! Look how many little trinkets this one was loaded with.

Burl city.

Hiouchi Visitor Center

Another good rainy day thing-to-do is trek to all the visitor centers to scope out their different exhibits and gift shops. We always try to hit them all to get our National Parks Passport stamp and every different sticker we can find.

Today was Ike’s birthday, by the way!

Originally, we planned to hike Fern Canyon the following day. We had our permits and everything! But after the rain of today, we realized that the road would be pretty impassable in our little mini van. There are two river crossings haha sigh.

The exact moment above where Ike was talking to the ranger was when we finally came to terms with needing to change this plan.

Do you think Amelia Earhart would be psyched to have these trees named after her?

We headed into Crescent City, the northern gateway town of the redwoods (Eureka being the southern one), to grab lunch. Check out our ketchup cup… yes that was our best option, trust me.

Crescent City, California

With bellies full of BK, we GPS’d to yet another geocache. This time, hidden on this awesome spiral staircase that led down to the beach and had a view of this cutie little lighthouse in the distance.

Finding home for the night

We had reservations for a second night of camping at Elk Prairie Campground in the Prairie Creek Redwoods. By this point, the rain hadn’t let up and we were like, do we really wanna sleep outside and figure out how to cook dinner on our wet picnic table?, but felt committed to the idea of ~*camping in the redwoods*~ especially since we knew how coveted the reservations were.

When we got back to our site, the bundle of firewood we’d paid for the day before and kept dry in our bear box was stolen. Uggghhh. You know that feeling. The worst.

We took it as a sign, packed up, and headed out.

I wondered if the motel we had reservations for the next night would allow us to stay one night earlier instead. We figured, what’s the worst that could happen? They say no? We’d passed the motel a few times now on our way back and forth from Crescent City and the parking lot was *empty empty* so I crossed my fingers for good odds of plenty of availability.

I was greeted by the most polite owner who had no problem moving things around for us. Man, independent motels are the absolute BEST and one of my favorite parts of roadtripping. She gave a ton of valuable advice about how to make best use of our next morning which was also shaping up to be pretty rainy.

When I made these reservations months before, I did so not realizing that it’s owned by the same people who run Trees of Mystery which is literally right across the street. Trees of Mystery wasn’t originally on our itinerary because, honestly, it seemed super kitschy. It’s one of the super iconic AAA tourist traps. But after experiencing the hospitality when we arrived, there was no question that that’s what we’d be doing first thing in the morning.

Okay but for real, where can I buy this wallpaper? Would you judge me if that’s a major reason why I was pulled to make this reservation in the first place…

See? RIGHT across the street. That’s from the doorway of our room. Look a little Paul Bunyan and Blue. Adorb.

Anywho, you already know where we ended up next. 🙂

More about Redwood Creek Overlook:
https://www.nps.gov/places/redwoodcreekoverlook.htm

Redwood National & State Parks via NPS:
https://www.nps.gov/redw/index.htm

Ah-Pah Interpretive Trail via AllTrails:
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/ah-pah-interpretive-trail

Ah-Pah Interpretive Trail via NPS:
https://www.nps.gov/places/ahpahtrail.htm

Stay at Motel Trees:
https://www.moteltrees.com/

Visit Trees of Mystery:
https://treesofmystery.net/