Northern California Coastal Plains

Embedded in the coastal ranges of northern California are redwood groves that make up 45% of the remaining old growth redwoods of in California (ref). The Redwood National and State Parks are: Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, and Redwood National Park.

I've visited the northern coast of California twice, camping in both Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park.My first trip to northern California was in May of 2001. This was the first (car) camping trip my husband and I took. During this trip we were traveling from Austin, Texas to Seattle, Washington. As is typical with our camping trips we arrived in the park in the middle of the night and setup our tent by flashlight. Due to the time of our arrival, we opted to not to completely setup the tent and were extremely fortunate that it didn't rain the following day. Unfortunately, due to poor planning, we were forced to leave the campsite early the next day in order to reach Seattle in time for me to begin my summer internship at Elliott Bay Design Group.

As we were heading out we came across a huge redwood that our inner tree hugger couldn't pass up. After hugging the tree we took off for Seattle taking pictures of some places that reminded us of the Forest moon of Endor. I half expected to stumble upon an Ewok village or derelict speeder bikes. Of course, I could never stumble into an Ewok village, but I'd have flipped out if I'd seen a chow running around the forest. Good times.

Our second trip to northern California was in 2003, after we had moved to Seattle. During this trip we drove south to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and began our slow drive north along the Pacific coast. Our journey up the coast was slow, particularly considering we kept finding "scenic overlooks" that demanded to be photographed. My photography does not do the region justice as it truly is gorgeous, like my husband. :)

We finally made it to an area we could drive out onto the beach where we proceeded to dare each other to walk out closer and closer to the breaking waves. Of course, when I say dare, I mean I kept calling my husband a wimp for not taking off his shoes and walking out into the ice cold water. Of course he walked away dry and I was drenched and ran back to the car to warm my freezing toes!

After warming my toes, we headed back to set up camp and take a hike through the area redwoods. It was too dark for most of the pictures to come out, but I managed to get a great picture looking up through the trees. We also took some video running through the woods to let our Star Wars geek out. We attempted to transform our bikes into speeder bikes, but the shakiness of the film is enough to make one ill. To get a smoother video, we took the camera for a ride in the car while speeding past the redwoods.

While out terrorizing the area with speeder bike noises, we journeyed up to Crescent City to visit the Battery Point Lighthouse. The light was closed, so we got as close as we could to take a couple pictures.

The remainder of our time was spent hiking and driving around the coastal plains, biking and cooking over our wondrous camp fire. Our camp fire was wondrous because it took close to 2 hours to get it started. We had forgotten a starter log and igniter fluid and were forced to burn napkins and blow on the fire until our firewood was dry enough to burn. Of course, we could have driven up to Crescent City and purchased the necessary supplies, but we were intent in our fire making adventure and persisted until we had completed our mission. While silly, that fire gave us a deep sense of accomplishment and made us realize how vital making a fire was to our camping experience.