Crescent City, CA - Trails and Trials

One last hike in the Redwoods before we head up the coast to Newport, OR. Where to today? How about the Boy Scout Trail in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods? To get there, you "drive” down Howland Road. Of course depending upon how recently it’s been plowed, Howland Road is an adventure in itself. Winding in and out of Redwoods, usually with no place to pass an oncoming car.

Potholes? I couldn’t count them all. Ruts, just the same. Luckily, I’ve got a bar in front of the passenger seat to hold on to. But what views of the redwoods. If you’re ever in this area, take Howland Road in Jedediah Smith State Park to the Stout Grove.

Part of the beauty of Jedediah Smith Redwoods is that it is the single least developed and most pristine old-growth forest around. In the sunny morning, the rays of the sun filter in and out of the trees. I wonder what it must be like to hike here in the fog - probably quite mysterious.

At times, the trail wends through awesome old growth trees, the woods are quiet with nary a car or motorcycle or truck to be heard, At other times, as you hike upwards and into a landscape dotted with smaller trees, it feels much more intimate: just you and the trees. A sense of isolation prevails and you feel like you should talk in whispers. We were surprised to hear only a few birds and see no scampering squirrels.

At the end is Fern Falls, small but tumbling over the massed rocks. Here we found a large log to sit on for lunch and were soon joined by a young woman named Suena from Switzerland. She asked if she could eat here also - of course. She’s 21 and has been an apprentice for 3 years in an office and has worked there for another 3 years. Then she took off, went to Vancouver, CA to get her English Certificate, a prized accomplishment in Europe since it means that you speak fluent English. Obviously, this means that you have a better choice of jobs. And, yes, she speaks fluent English though, she admitted, that she still does not think in English.

Now she is taking 4 - 5 months to travel through the west coast of America. She found out that renting a car in America and getting insurance is very expensive (she’s under 25, not married and not a citizen) so she bought a Jeep Cherokee, got insurance as an owner and is now driving around. She finds places to stay overnight through Couchsurfing.com where she find people who have a space for someone to stay in their home. Both the people with homes and the travelers are reviewed so she feels quite safe and enjoys meeting the people she stays with. She is now staying with a 65-yr old woman in Crescent City who travels a lot herself.

When she gets to Los Angeles, she's going to sell the car and fly to Hawaii for a month and a half. Then it's back to Switzerland and school. She's studying to be a Social Worker.

Now, I don’t have kids but I think that I would be really leery of letting my daughter do this. But - she is 21 and an adult. And she’s having a great time, she's learning how to make her own way in a different place in a different language, she's developing self confidence in her own decision making, she's doing a great job and - she's fun to talk with.

        (Hi, there, Suena, we enjoyed hiking with you. Happy travels in the future. Hope to see you in Switzerland sometime.)

We finished lunch and headed back but stopped to see the Boy Scout Tree. Huge. And, how did anyone get that sign up there?

Very good hike and we’d recommend it to anyone. Intimate walk through old growth redwoods, a huge tree at the end and a waterfall. What more could you ask for in a hike? Maybe you’ll even meet an interesting person for lunch.

In the evening we did our usual getting ready for travel tomorrow. Gary brought in the utilities except electricity and I worked inside. Because it was raining, we brought in the bedroom slide to prevent rain from getting on the top. Yes, we have covers on our slides but this rain was blowing sideways and we just didn’t want to worry about rain tomorrow when we wanted to move on. At 2:16 am, I was awakened by a continual gust of wind that was flapping the cover on our living room slide. WHAP, WHAP. Wow, that is some wind. Gary was awake too. Finally, after about 15 nerve wracking minutes of this, we both got up and pulled in the other two slides: on either side of the living room. Slowly we pulled them in making sure that the rain was being pushed off by the gaskets. Whew. All in.

Of course, with all slides pulled in, Gary had to crawl over my legs to get out of the bed. However, we both slept much better though the rain was still pretty heavy. Nothing like a heavy rain on the roof of an RV to ‘lull’ you to sleep. Ha ha.

In the morning as we got ready to move on, we saw this little fellow guarding his hole on the dune in front of our RV. He was so still that we both had to put on our glasses before we realized that he was a ground squirrel - an unmoving sentry.