Crescent City California – BOOTS on the TRAIL

Hidden Beach (Redwood National Park) 20-Oct-2020

2020-10-202020-10-23Posted in Hiking, Northern California, U.S. National Parks & MonumentsTagged California Coastal Trail, Crescent City California, Day Hiking, Hidden Beach California, Hiking, Klamath River California, Northern California, Redwood National Park California2 Comments

Hidden Beach sits within Redwood National Park along the California coast some 15 or so miles south of Crescent City. As its name implies, it’s only accessible by trail. One of these starts near the Trees of Mystery parking lot and the other – part of the California Coastal Trail – from the Lagoon Creek Picnic Area off Highway 101. Having just visited the Trees, we elected to start from the picnic area. After passing the beach, the Coastal Trail continues on to the drive-in Klamath Overlook (which gives you a view of the mouth of the Klamath River). So our plan became to hike out-and-back to the overlook (or near it), visiting the beach along the way.

Continue reading →

Trees of Mystery (Klamath, California) 19-Oct-2020

2020-10-192021-08-29Posted in Northern California, Other StuffTagged Crescent City California, Northern California, Redwood National Park California, Redwoods, Trees of Mystery California

My parents were very hard workers; not given much to frivolous (in their eyes) expenditures. Exceptions could be made (rarely) for Disneyland. But visits to smaller kitschy tourist attractions, no matter how iconic, were off the table. And certainly we were not going to drive the length of California to see some trees, regardless of their degree of mysteriousness. So a visit to the Trees of Mystery, a small attraction in the redwoods just south of Crescent City, California had to wait its turn. And wait and wait and wait. But, past a certain point, this waiting wasn’t on my parents. Although I must have driven past it numerous times over the years, I had other places to go and no time for a tourist trap. Well times change (don’t they ever!). Now I had some time and not a lot of other places to go. So we started a short hiking trip to the coast with a long delayed visit to the Trees of Mystery.

Continue reading →

Fern Canyon (Prairie Creek Redwoods SP) 30-Sep-2015

2015-09-302022-01-28Posted in California, Hiking, Northern CaliforniaTagged California, Crescent City California, Day Hiking, Fern Canyon California, Gold Bluff Beach California, Hiking, James Irving Trail California, Northern California, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

Fern Canyon Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park California

For a change of pace, we decided to do a couple of hikes in the state and federal redwood parks in Northern California. Timing-wise, now is sort of a sweet spot between the crowded summer tourist season and the onset (hopefully) of the rainy season. After a night in Crescent City, California, we drove down to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park for a hike through the Murrelet State Wilderness to Gold Bluffs Beach via Fern Canyon. Our plan was an out-and-back on the James Irvine Trail from park headquarters but this would become a loop as we discovered trails not shown on the CalTopo maps. This is part of Hike #100 in Sullivan’s Oregon Coast & Coast Range hiking and travel guide (Third Edition, 2014), but we did a much longer loop than he describes. We drove the Drury Parkway to the trailhead at the park’s visitor center. From there, we crossed the creek,

Continue reading →