04/16/03:
Torrential rains for most of the night. Drove the 30 miles or so up US-101 into Eureka and the next 30 miles to the Redwood National Park. The park is more of a general area than an enclosed park. It is combined with state parks with towns residing in the middle.
My first stop after picking up a map at the visitor center was Lady Bird Johnson Grove Trail. This is a one mile loop through old redwoods. The thick canopy 300 feet above did not do a lot to keep the rain off. Right before the turnoff I got a couple of pictures of a herd of Roosevelt Elk resting on the bank of a river.
A little way north of there is Elk Meadow and sure enough there was a big herd there too and more pictures Davison Road leads to the 2.5 mile round trip Trillium Falls Trail. The fall are .4 miles into the trail through huge redwood trees with ferns everywhere and everything covered with moss. This is really a wet, humid environment. No wonder they call it tropical.
I followed the road on to Gold Bluff Beach. Crappy road, crappy bluffs, crappy beach... and they (California) wanted $4 day use and $12 for camping. I didn't even see the campground and just turned around and got out of there.
04/17/03 Hiking James Irvine Trail (2.5 miles one way):
Lots more rain last night but surprisingly, none while hiking. At least I don't think it rained. There's so much moisture in the tree tops 300 feet above that any breeze that moves the branches brings a downpour. That happened a couple of times.
I picked up the trail across from the Visitor's Center and immediately plunged into darkness because of the dense redwoods. The trail is almost perfectly flat at this point and the humidity must have been 95 percent. Fortunately it was in the low 60's. Ferns and redwoods, redwoods and ferns everywhere.
At the 2.5 mile mark the trail descends a couple of hundred feet along the Fern Canyon Access Trail. I followed the trail all the way to the end but didn't see any signs for Fern Canyon. On the way back I followed a trail off to the right into a meadow with three elk. Farther up the trail I followed another trail off to the right and this seemed to lead to Fern Canyon. At least there was a kinda canyon with lots of ferns on it.
Back at the 2.5 mile mark I elected to take the Clintonia Trail rather than follow the James Irvine Trail back. This was 1 mile of mild ups and downs, mostly ups. It links up with the 2.1 mile Miners Ridge Trail which is moderate up most of the way and then a sharp decline back to the Visitor's Center.
04/18/03:
Some rain last night but not too much. Pretty nice day though. For around here I guess it was great, no rain. I dunno where the day went. Started out just doing a couple little nature trails around Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and then moved north.
Stopped at Klamath River Overlook and stayed for a couple of hours. This is a bluff 500 feet above the mouth of the river with a trail leading down to a little lookout about 400 feet down. Standing at the top I could see something swimming around and was hoping it was sea lions. Turns out they were harbor seals but then I saw a spout but very close to shore. After watching a while I saw at least three whales in that area. Because of the distance they seemed smaller than they probably were. Maybe resting on the 5000 mile trip from Baja to Alaska. They breached fairly often. You'd see a long head pop out of the water as if to look around. Sometimes quite a bit of the back would be visible. I don't think the water was deep enough for them to dive so no big tail action.