Good day, For me at least, I'm not grinding my teeth, I'm not lying awake

And so today was the last excursion day of the trip with tomorrow being the drive home. I’ve been to the redwoods a couple times before and it always seems so unexpectedly beautiful, it’s just trees! But there’s a quietness here and the weather started out perfect, overcast with a light drizzle, mists drifting in from the ocean and the sun just starting to burn through.

I started at the national forest visitor center which is at the south end of the multiple parks and planned to work my way north from there. After getting trail maps and recommendations from the staff there I headed out with a first stop at the Lady Byrd Johnson trail. This is an easy mile and a half loop through old growth redwoods and always has that classic ethereal redwood forest look. I’m not sure if that is due to location or maybe just because I always start there.

The next stop was a new one for me, the trillium falls loop that was a short hike to the falls but then another 2 miles past that to complete the loop. Most people just do to the falls and turn back so I had the rest of the trail entirely to myself. It was incredibly quiet except for the bugs and birds so I took my time getting back to the parking lot.

From there I continued north and turned off on the Drury scenic drive and the Prairie Creek state park. There are tons of trails along the drive but the ones I was interested in were right at the beginning; the Big Tree loop, Cathedral Trees trail/Foothills trail loop. Danielle and I were at big Tree the last time through and I recognized some trees on the Cathedral Trees trail (really!) so I think we did at least part of that. I did a short detour up the rhododendron trail but didn’t have time for the whole thing so that’s on the list for next time. The Cathedral Tree trail I think had the most old growth trees and it was nice to be able to make a loop out of it with the relatively flat foothills trail.

By that time it was 3:15 and I had about a 45 minute drive back to Crescent City and my knees didn’t hurt yet. I had planned to hike until my knee said it was time to head back so I continued up the scenic drive and stopped at a couple of trail heads to check them out and finally settled on Zigzag #2 which was a short 0.6 mile hike in that connected to a few longer trails. I figured about another mile seemed good so headed in and up. I hadn’t downloaded this trail on the app ahead of time so I didn’t realize it climbed 400ft in the first quarter mile! But the views were worth it, while not being at the tops of the trees being more middle was still a different perspective than being at ground level. This was another quiet trail and being late in the day once again it seemed I had the entire forest to myself. That seemed like a good note to end the day with so I aimed the car north to head back to town. All tolled I ended up with 8 miles hiking, and yes a sore knee. I really want to check out the longer trails that branch off of Zigzag. It seems you can create some much longer loops connecting some of the other trails I hiked today. Next time…

I think today was the most pictures I had taken in one day so even though it’s basically all just trees I had a difficult time narrowing it down so here’s a selection.