Road trip journal #2: Among the Giants
Revisiting Mattole Road and redwoods state parks. Less driving got offset by a nice, long hike in the redwoods.
Summary
- Start: 09:35 (Mattole Beach, CA)
- Finish: 20:20 (Crescent City, CA)
- Distance: 115 mi (185 km)
- Hiking: 7.5 mi (12 km)
- Steps: >28000
- Calories: >5000
- Mood: less stressed
Mattole Road
The day started foggy. I embarked on Mattole Road north. The road is winding, in bad shape, beautiful, and familiar. I had done this drive last year, and took pictures on some of the same spots as last time.
The first stop was near Black Sands Beach (well, one of them). This time I also took some aerial footage – last year when I visited, the Skydio 2 wasn’t yet a finished product.
The climbing part of the road is a very fun drive. The fact that some holes have holes in them makes it that much more endearing. The dry grass is somehow beautifully juxtaposed with the run-down, winding road on which overtaking is allowed on all parts.
Rhododendron Trail hike
I stopped in Eureka to finish and upload yesterday’s journal because I got cell signal there. The original plan was to visit Patrick’s Point State Park just north of Trinidad. However, that would have taken about 2 hours for more of similar coastal views, and it was already pretty late. Instead, I visited the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and hiked on the Rhododendron Trail for about 7.5 mi (12 km).
It took almost exactly 4 hours, starting around 15:20 and ending around 19:20. This is why I skipped Patrick’s point, and it was totally worth it. This is my longest single hike so far. I wanted to visit redwoods, since I only drove through the park last year.
At the end my t-shirt was completely wet, probably from the 2 liters of water I drank along the way perspiring. I had found this trail on https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/rhododendron-trail, looking for something long. I made a loop instead of turning around and going back the same way.
The Prairie Creek Trail was somewhat annoying, being very narrow with 2 m (6‘7”) ferns poking at your face. On this trail I saw a (seemingly freshly) dead black mouse, and the tail end of a snake crossing the trail. Yikes. What made it scary was that the trail is almost overgrown, and very narrow, so there’s no way to see if any reptilian wildlife is waiting for prey.
Last year I had done the Boy Scout trail in Jebediah Smith Redwoods State Park, which was 2.8 miles (4.5 km) one way. In total that was 5.6 mi (9 km), and took me 3 hours. That was purely magical, as I felt teleported to some prehistoric age, surrounded by huge trees and massive ferns, with no sounds of civilization, nor even birds.
On the trail I mainly used my venus optics Laowa 7.5mm f/2 lens, since its 100 degree field of view allowed to easily capture the scenery of massive trees in one photo. I also recorded 360 video of the hike from high above, using 2 insta invisible selfie sticks, reaching probably around 3.5 m height for the camera placement.
High Bluff
Finally, I wanted to visit High Bluff overlook and Klamath River overlook again, as I had visited them last year.
No RV park for you!
Unfortunately, they were closed. Looking for a campground to sleep, I didn’t find anything practical or available. There were lots of RV parks in the area, though, and I also hadn’t put much effort into the search. Instead, I’ve decided to go to a hotel and take a jacuzzi bath to get rid of all the sweat. I plan to sleep long, and take the next day at a leisurely pace.
