Day 5 - Humboldt Redwoods State Park

Day 5 - I woke up with the worst cold and congestion ever.  We had to go out and buy a box of Kleenex to keep up with my snotty cold!  Ewwww.  But it was a good day for a drive to see more redwoods!  We knew we wanted to take a 2-day trip to see more big trees.  We considered driving to see the giant sequoias, but they were more inland and at higher elevation, so we knew snow (and driving) could be a problem, especially with our rental Chrysler 200.  A few of the parks we looked at had already closed a lot of their roads for the season.  So we decided to go up north to see more coastal redwoods and avoid the chance of closed roads.  It was a great choice!

The tunnel right past the Golden Gate Bridge - loved it!

The drive to Humboldt Redwoods State Park's Avenue of the Giants was about 3.5 hours north of San Francisco.  We drove through wine country and lots of mountains, but the rain didn't make for many good pics on the drive.  We did hit a few snow squalls in the mountains - but fortunately it was too warm to really stick to the road or affect our drive.

Our first stop was a drive-through tree:

We both took turns driving through the tree, there wasn't a big lineup of cars on a cold, rainy weekday afternoon. It was a tight fit, but so cool!

Then we hit the beginning of the Avenue of the Giants - a 30 mile stretch of twisty turny road along the Eel River, where huge redwoods are RIGHT on the edge of the road the whole way! 

There were lots of turnoffs, picnic areas, parks, etc.  We stopped at several.

Two story cabin for reference

For size perspective, note our car at the bottom of the picture.  That is NOT a toy car!

At another pulloff:

Where's Waldo?  (Chris)

The whole drive was this amazing!  It made Muir Woods look like a itty bitty city park!

Another view of the road, and how close and huge the redwoods are!

Pano!

Super clear little creek winding through the woods

We found the Eel River on one of our short hikes

View outside the Visitor's Center...the road was lined with redwoods!

We only made it halfway up the Avenue of the Giants, to the Visitor's Center, where we looked around and learned a lot about the history and conservation of the area.  After the Visitor's Center, we drove south to Myers Flat to check into our bed and breakfast, which was kind of sketchy.  But we got a great night of sleep and had a yummy breakfast, so we can't complain too much.

We had dinner at the Avenue Café in Miranda, a few miles south of Myers Flat.  It was really one of the only options on the whole route, but it was GOOD!  Especially for being a little hole-in-the-wall place!

It was an awesome day, a perfect slow pace after a long day of hard hiking the day before.  It was cool but not cold, there was no wind, and only a light drizzle of rain.  Perfect hiking weather!  And the trails were nice and short and flat, and right off the road, which was perfect for my tired, sick self.  The trees were amazing and made everything we had seen the previous day look like saplings!  We just oohed and ahhed the whole drive! 

We saw the northern half of the park the following day...to be continued!