EUREKA, CA – From our base in this Victorian-era logging city on California’s north coast, we’ve launched two forays into the quiet and majestic forests of coastal redwood trees, some of them soaring more than 300 feet high.
On Friday, we drove north to Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, where we walked through Fern Canyon and along the 2.5-mile Prairie Creek and Foothills Loop Trail. Fern Canyon is such a strange and wonderful place that Stephen Spielberg filmed this dinosaur attack scene there for “Jurassic Park 2.” On our visit, it was a peaceful place—a narrow gorge with a stream flowing through it and lush ferns covering the sides.
After walking on the nearby beach, we drove to another spot in the park to hike through old-growth redwood trees on the Prairie Creek and Foothills trails. As I’ve complained before, it’s impossible to capture the immensity of these trees on a camera (at least by me on an iPhone 11). The trees are so huge that they exist in three different climate zones—the shaded forest floor, the bare trunk, and the branches and green needles at the forest canopy. The park literature said a tree can give off 500 gallons of water a day, reclaiming it from the moist air from the nearby ocean. A herd of elk greeted us near the visitors center.
And today we drove south to the Humboldt Redwoods State Forest, where we hiked the Rockefeller Loop and the Founders Loop. We enjoyed walking along the quiet trails, with ferns growing on the forest floor and sunlight filtering through the branches of the redwoods 300 feet above us. When we weren’t looking up, we were gawking at the “fallen giants,” especially the Dyerville Giant, which fell on March 24, 1991. At the time it was at least 362 feet tall–comparable to a 30-story building–52 feet in circumference, and weighed an estimated 1 million pounds! They figure the tree was 1,600 years old, which means it began to grow as a seedling about when Augustine was writing his Confessions and City of God.
Photos below: 1) Standing athwart one of the fallen giant redwoods; 2) Elizabeth on a trail in Humboldt Redwoods State Park; 3) At the base of Founders Tree, which is 346 feet tall; 4) This tree was damaged by fire, but its top was still green; 5) The exposed roots of the fallen Dyerville Giant; 6) Astride the Dyerville Giant.
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