We spent the night at Motel Trees literally right across the street, so it was a breeze to arrive at Trees of Mystery right when they opened at 9AM. It’s in Klamath, California – basically immediately north of the Prairie Creek Redwoods. General admission is $30 per adult.

This visit wasn’t originally in our plans but it was recommended by the host at Motel Trees and we needed to kill time ’til it stopped raining, so we went in with little-to-no expectations. I’m so glad we did.

The parking lot is guarded by this gigantic Paul Bunyan and Babe.

Paul is 30,000 pounds, 49’2″ tall, and carrying an axe that’s 27 feet long. Babe the blue ox is very anatomically correct, is 35 feet long, and also weighs 30,000 pounds. They were built by Ward Berg and designed by Ann Cooper, and Babe is currently under construction.

The trail starts with a meander through a ton of interesting-looking redwoods with cute names like the Elephant Tree and the Upside Down tree. The Upside Down tree sprouted 3000 years ago – isn’t that so crazy? That’s 1000 BC! That’s the start of the Iron Age, ~1000 years before Christianity existed of course, and King David was in rule.

“Redwood Burl… One of nature’s mysteries, burls are famous for their beautiful grain. No one knows why they grow.”

Needless to say, the next part is the real reason everyone comes here.

The Redwood Canopy Trail is one of the coolest things ever and is one of those quintessential Redwood Tourist stops that you see on every billboard and commercial that advertises this area of California. You’d think it might be overrated… nope.

Like I said, we got to Trees of Mystery right when they opened. This luckily meant that we had it almost allllll to ourselves. It was surreal to be able to hang out and take in being so high up within the trees, without being rushed by a flow of people.

The bridges do bounce a little bit when you walk across – nothing crazy – so we took our time walking across carefully, especially since the wood was wet and kinda slippery.

After leaving the canopy, the trail continues through the forest on a flat path. There are these audio boxes playing songs and narrating facts about the trees.

“Did you know? Redwood bark is a protector against fire as it has neither pitch nor resin. The wood also contains great amounts of water. Redwood is used in building as it is impervious to disease and insects.”

“Did you know? At one time, redwoods of many species covered most of the Earth. The Ice Age destroyed most of them except those of the Coast and the Sierra Nevada.”

The trail eventually leads up to the Sky Trail Gondola which is the second coolest thing about this place. Who doesn’t love a gondola?! Obsessed.

Foggy Twilight vibes*~

The gondola leads up to a little overlook from where you can see all the way to the Pacific Ocean, then you go alllll the way back down. There’s a little hiking trail that goes under the gondola’s path but it looked pretty sketch and mudded out (and with an insane incline) from what we could see from above.

“Did you know? Our redwoods were named for the famous Cherokee Indian, Sequoyah…” who was born in Tennessee around 1760, who observed the Europeans’ written language and became motivated to create the same for the Cherokee, so he developed 85 symbols for their spoken sounds.

“Did you know? There are three types of redwoods:

• Sequoia Sempervivens (Coast redwoods), Northern California
• Sequoiadendron Giganteum (Giant Sequoia), Sierra Nevada’s
• Metasequoia Glyptostroboides (Dawn Redwood), found in China in 1944.

The Metasequoia is the oldest of the three.“

The path leads to the silly Trail of Tall Tales that talks mostly about Paul Bunyan’s life via panels of redwood that are carved by chainsaw. Like, yeah, it’s super kitschy – but imagine how much freakin time went in to carving all of these, seriously.

Babe’s my fav obviously. :’)

We could see our room from last night through the trees! Hi, Paul.

How insane is that tree slice?!
1046 The Crusades, 1215 Magna Carta, 1492 Columbus, 1620 Pilgrims, 1776 Independence.

You exit through the gift shop, which is connected to this surprisingly interesting and unique museum with supposedly one of the world’s largest collections of Indigenous American artifacts.

I’m always enamored by the seel skin jackets when I see them. They have one just like it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I was also a huge fan of the deer skin ceremonial hood. It’s unfathomable to think about how much time and effort went in to all of this intricate hand-beading and hand-weaving work.

Look at this fish vertebrae necklace! And the cocoon rattle!!!

By the time we left a little before 11AM, the parking lot was totally full and multiple tour buses were unloading. Blessed by the time gods. 🙂 And off we went to one of my favorite hikes of the trip and the only stop we made in the Del Norte Coast Redwoods: Damnation Creek.

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