After kicking our butts by hiking the Damnation Creek trail, did we call it quits for the day and relax?

No, of course not.

The Grove of the Titans is one of the most visited redwood groves in the area, nestled in the confines of Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.

Howland Hill Road, tne lane dirt road that leads to the (super tiny) parking area, is so cool. It’s awesome to have the feeling of squeezing your car between two of those monsters. We drove it a couple of times during our stay and each time people generally drove badly – everyone’s too busy craning their necks and pulling over in the silliest spots to look at the trees haha. Can’t blame ’em though

The walk is really flat and easy, a couple of stairs, not too bad on my swollen little potatoes. I love how they have a huge grate boardwalk that protects the forest floor bit still lets you peek down into it.

They completed the boardwalk trail and opened it to the public in 2022. Before that, this area wasn’t technically “accessible” – but that didn’t stop people from trying to find this group of trees since the location was leaked by someone in 1998. In their various attempts to way-find through the trailless forest, they destroyed the shallow redwood root systems and forest floor.

The group of volunteers in the Redwoods Conservancy that protect the Grove of the Titans are called the Titaneers – how fucking cute is that? – and we have them to thank for being the guardians of this area.

We arrived a little after 5:30PM and spedwalked the entire way to make it out before sunset and figure out our eating and sleeping situation before it got dark.

We definitely ran in to the most people here out of any redwood grove we visited on this trip. It wasn’t so bad that we were following each other, but just a constant string of evenly spaced run-in’s around every corner.

It’s kinda nice how tiny the parking lot is here. Like, yes, that really sucks if you come down that tiny one lane road and can’t find a spot, and also can’t find anywhere to turn around… but at the same time, it’s such a great filter that keeps it a little less crowded.

I didn’t realize it while we were there, but apparently the Grove has had a string of thefts on this trail. Isn’t that insane that people would come here to steal? They’ve been taking the little bronze statues like the one below. 😦

Tiny me.

The main grove with the hugest trees is the end of the loop, it leads in a circle around them. The scale is *so* *insane.*

Gummy colas always. They were a total theme this day haha

We are all connected in this place.

Like I said, these guys are in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods. I was reading about Jedediah and he was a total crazy badass! He was born in the late-ish 1700’s and died in 1831. He’s considered the first person to successfully go from the East, through the Sierra Nevada, to California.

At one point, he was leading a group through the Rocky Mountains, on what would later morph into the Oregon Trail, and he was attacked by a grizzly bear! The thing literally scalped him, and the Jedediah told his friend how to sew it back on to his head. Haha ooookay sir

Couldn’t you just tuck in a take a little nap on that moss bed? Minus the spiders.

By this point, I just remember my stomach was growling so bad and I was like la lal al a another tree lalala who cares lalala french fries pizza laalala

Please do me a favor and never ever use this vault toilet. You will thank me. Just wait. It’s literally the worst one I’ve ever been in, and yes I risked one of my nine lives to use it. You know how seriously I take these vault toilet reviews…

Then out onto Howland Hill Road we went, and right back up in to Crescent City to find pizza, a comfy hotel room, and some good trash TV to lull us to sleep to get ready for it alllll over again.

Grove of the Titans via AllTrails:
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/grove-of-titans

More about Grove of the Titans via NPS:
https://www.nps.gov/places/got.htm

More about Grove of the Titans via Redwood Parks Conservancy:
https://redwoodparksconservancy.org/grove-of-titans/

All about Jedediah Smith:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedediah_Smith