We’re going on a trip, you and I, through the coastal regions of California which feature the world’s tallest trees, the Coastal Redwoods. Cousins of the squatter Sequoias inland (eg Yosemite), the Coastal Redwoods are their own species, and live in a much different climate. The Coastal Redwoods come with their own people, too, and we’ll spend plenty of times exploring small artsy towns, including my hometown of Arcata. Here’s your itinerary. All points in this itinerary are in the State of California.  For best results, take this trip in July, August or early September. Take as many or as few of these stops as you like. The North Coast itinerary is first; scroll down if you are interested in a Central Coast/Santa Cruz Mountains itinerary instead (or both!).

Day 1: Fly into Eureka-Arcata Airport, complete with elk-proof fence. Flying into this remote airstrip located on a threatening sea cliff will take you most of a day from anywhere except the San Francisco Bay Area, so no time for sightseeing. After you arrive in your turboprop (hopefully on a clear day so you can see the endless green mountains below) pick up your pre-arranged rental car and toodle down to Arcata to stay the night in the Hotel Arcata. Your hotel is located on a Victorian shopping plaza full of fun shops and colorful characters, and a central location of the northcoast’s environmental movement.  This is people-watching territory.

Day 2: Arcata & Trinidad: Keeping Arcata as your base, get your first taste of the big trees in one of the nation’s most glorious city parks, Redwood Park in Arcata (where you can take a nice hike or an adventure tour of the redwood canopy).  Afterwords, stop by the small but fascinating Natural History Museum, sponsored by Humboldt State University.  Spend some time shopping Arcata’s quaint Victorian shops.  Drive a few minutes north to Trinidad, and take a long walk on a gorgeous beach or hike up Trinidad Head. Have lunch at a nearby seafood shack at the base of Trinidad Head (list of all Trinidad restaurants here), or at the Indian casino (both with ocean view). Feeling energetic? Return to Arcata and see if anything interesting is going on at Humboldt State that evening, or catch a movie at the fully restored Arcata Minor theater, a hundred years old with a stunning interior and a balcony, or boogie over at the Arcata Theater Lounge, where I used to dress up for Rocky Horror midnight shows back in high school. Both are less than a couple of blocks from your hotel.  Want some live theater? There are several great theater companies here - North Coast Rep and Ferndale Rep are both great, but the full list can be found here. Tickets are quite affordable and the quality is high.

Day 3: Lady Bird Johnson Grove Check out of the hotel. Rent a tent and gear at the outdoor store on the Arcata Plaza (changed a little from the picture above, now called Pacific Outfitters. Also check out Adventure’s Edge a few blocks north). Head north to Orick, about 45 minutes from Arcata on the Redwood Highway. Stop at the beautiful Redwood National Park Visitor’s Center on the beach. Get maps & permits & advice for the days ahead.  Zip a couple of minutes north and head up Bald Hills Road to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. Spend about two hours here, hiking around one of the most spectacular groves of old-growth redwoods in existence. Then head over to your (already reserved) overnight location, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and drive several miles on a dirt road to Gold Bluffs Beach where you will camp on a remote strip of sand next to high sandstone cliffs.

Day 4: Fern Canyon and Prairie Creek Redwoods:  Wake up and discover you’re camping right next to an amazing canyon covered in ferns in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. The location is so unique it was featured in Jurassic Park 2 as if it was part of a tropical island (the poor dinosaurs trampled from Hawaii to Humboldt during that film – they must have been tired). Explore the canyon and the beautiful beach and bluffs (no swimming here) in easy day hiking, and catch sight of the world’s largest living Elk, the Roosevelt, who often wander right through the campground. Then pack the tent and head back up to the main park headquarters, where you’ll check into the campground there. Spend the rest of the day exploring the giant trees and viewing the elk herds of this jewel of a state park. There a dozens of massive groves in here, many without even trails to meet them. Watch out for cougars. (not kidding. A couple were attacked by a cougar here a few  years back. But it’s only happened once!.

Special, and unfortunate, note: due to the budget crisis in California the campground at Prairie Creek has actually been closed for long periods of time in 2011.  Here’s hoping this gets figured out and it reopens permanently in 2012. Alternate lodging (motel) can be had in Orick, or just head back to Trinidad.

Day 5:  Redwood National Park Tall Trees Grove:  Leave your tent at Prairie Creek (And any food in the bear locker. Trust me.) and head back up Bald Hills Road, well past Lady Bird Johnson. With permit in hand (you got it at the Redwood National park visitor’s center a couple of days ago) hike the Tall Trees Trail, an all-day effort that can be strenuous. The trail takes you down to a grove with several of the world’s tallest trees. In the summer, you can cross the pleasantly named monster Redwood Creek to get a better view. Bring plenty of water, good shoes, and enjoy this ten mile hike. Return, exhausted, to Prairie Creek for the night.

Note: there are additional redwood groves all along Highway 101; one of my favorites was saved only a few months before it was to be completely destroyed by clear cutting. That grove is somewhere near Stone Lagoon but I can’t seem to find an online resource that points there. Exquisite single track trail through huge trees on a steep hillside, adding to the dramatic effect of the giants. Ask at the NPS visitor center for more details.  One of the groves in there bears the name of my late great-uncle, Richard Leonard, who was president of the Save the Redwoods League and the Sierra Club.

Day 6-7. Jedediah Smith State Park & Del Norte County: Head north on a stunning drive from Prairie Creek. Stop for plenty of photo ops along the way. Don’t miss “Trees of Mystery” which has an excellent Native American museum and – believe it or not – a sky tram that takes you through the canopy of an old growth redwood grove. Very much worth a stop.  Head north to Crescent City, which was wiped out by a tsunamai after the ’69 Alaska quake, then threatened again in the Japanese Quake of 2010, and which is now a small supply point for a very small population here. Gas up and replenish camping supplies at the local stores or Wal-Mart. Check out a short walk to the sculpted beauty of Enderts Beach. Sometime after lunch, head inland on Highway 199 to Jedediah Smith State Park, where you’ll camp right by the Smith River, a National Wild and Scenic River. You’ll be sleeping across the river from a grove of redwoods thought to be the greatest concentration of biomass on the planet earth. They don’t get much bigger than this, or easier to get to, at least when the river isn’t raging.  The next morning hike through the park and see the sights.

Day 8: Drive to Eureka. Drive back down Hwy 101 and pick up sights you missed on the way: When you find a bridge with Golden Bears, take a sharp right onto a small highway and find a fake farmhouse with a stunning view that used to be a submarine watching station in WW2.  See the Klamath River overlook as well. Good whale watching area at the right time of year.  On your way south, stop in Arcata and turn in the tent and gear your rented.  Drive a few miles further south to Eureka, and check into the Best Western Bayshore Inn, a modern motel with a Victorian motif near modern amenities (alternate is the recently restored Eureka Inn, which is genuinely old and closer to Old Town). Spend the remainder of the day checking out Eureka’s exquisite victorian district, called “Old town” Don’t miss the famous Carson Mansion and the many art galleries, which feature the work of America’s premier landscape painting artist community. For a good overview of local work, see the excellent Morris Graves museum nearby.

Day 9: Drive to Scotia. The Scotia Inn is your stop for the night, in a timber town that up until a few years ago was owned by the Most Evil Company on Earth. But not anymore. With the effective end of the most contentious part of the redwood wars with the purchase of Pacific Lumber by the family that founded the Gap Clothing Stores, it’s safe for an environmentally conscious person to sleep in Scotia again. Timber harvesting goes on, but in a more sustainable manner. And it’s a nice inn very close to some great parks to see. Alternative: stay in Fortuna, just to the north. There are some new chain hotels there that are pretty affordable.

Day 10-11:  Humboldt Redwoods State Park & vicinity:  Explore the redwood park most likely to make you feel like a Hobbit. Humboldt Redwoods has the biggest fallen trees you will EVER see – the log to end all logs is right here. Truly, a visitor feels like a lilliputian in this forest.  Whenever I’ve gone to this park I see small children giggling around these monster logs like they’re in Disneyland. Great park for kids.

Day 12: Travel home.  Check out of the Scotia Inn early and head back to the airport. Engage in meditation exercises to prepare you for the moment your rickety turboprop drops off the edge of the sea cliff  and sends you on your way home, with or without the contents of your stomach.

Alternate itinerary - follow these stops if you want to drive to the Redwood Empire from the San Francisco Bay Area. A popular option for out of staters who can fly in to on of the three Bay Area airports (SFO, OAK, SJC) more cheaply than points north.

Day 1: Santa Cruz – You probably flew into SFO or San Jose airport.  Drive over Highway 17 (steep, curvy, drive carefully; rush hour westbound is weeknights from 4:00 – 7:00pm.) and spend your first night in Santa Cruz, an hour from the airport.  A  quintessential beach town, Santa Cruz is full of great shops and counterculture fun, butterflies, sweeping views, big waves, and a steam train through the redwoods (well worth it, much more interesting route, with twists and bridges through the big trees, than any tourist train I’ve been on in years). Many hotel options here, but one of the nicest is the Dream Inn, if you can afford it.  The old-fashioned boardwalk has tons of amusements for all ages. If you have a little time, take a drive up to the University of California at Santa Cruz – besides being one of the top 5 schools in the country for undergraduate study in hard sciences, UC Santa Cruz has a stunning and unique campus in the redwoods. A great souvenir is a UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs (their mascot) t-shirt at the bookstore.

Day 2: The Santa Cruz mountains – the ancient, low mountain range up the river from Santa Cruz. California’s first state park – Big Basin – introduces you to the really big trees and some rare super-squiggly redwood bark (near the main entrance, ask a ranger for directions). Boulder Creek, a formerly rough n’ ready logging town, and where I spent my early childhood, is now all gussied up and even has an art and wine festival. You’ll find long drives on twisty roads in the dense redwoods. This is a darker, narrower, more compact version of redwood country than the North Coast, but the weather tends to be very warm all summer long.

Day 3: Head up to San Francisco via Highway 1. Enjoy the scenery on the Peninsula – Half Moon Bay, Pigeon Point lighthouse, and more, and end your day in San Francisco, a city whose thousands of Victorians are built out of old growth redwood. See the sights. We won’t spend much time on this stop as guidebooks aplenty exist to help you.

Day 4 – 6: San Francisco After a day or so in San Francisco, start the drive into California’s northern territories. Take a quick stop in Marin county to see the relatively modest Muir Woods – a precious grove, to be sure, but outdone by everything north (and Big Basin, too, for that matter). Then step over to the Marin Headlands and see an amazing lighthouse with a swinging bridge, because you can. Need more lighthouse? Head to the coast to see Point Reyes National Seashore. And though it is most beautiful on a rare clear day, if the fog is low enough you’ll see something amazing too.

Day 7: Mendocino Coast. Drive north into the Mendocino Coast. Stay at one of the B&B’s along the way. Wander north to Ft. Bragg. See rugged coastline, funky coffee shops, spas, weird people and things and lush, but relatively young, forests.

Day 9: On to the Redwood Empire – see main itinerary above.

Lodging note: I’ve recommended a couple of local Inns above. But over the last few years several major chain hotels have also built new buildings in Fortuna in Humboldt County. Fortuna is very conveniently located for those who want to go both south and north without switching hotels; however, I believe that actually staying in Arcata, Eureka or Scotia gives the visitor a better sense of the area, as the newer Fortuna hotels are literally out in a cowfield next to the freeway.  Choose what makes you comfortable; the chain hotels are generally cheaper, but have far less atmosphere.  A list of many hotel options can be found here.

More resources:

Tourism resources: The Turtle Rocks Oceanfront Inn up in Trinidad has a great itineraries page focused on the northern half of the redwood empire.  Redwoods.info is a site that captures info on activities and sights in Humboldt County. Del Norte County (Crescent City, Jedediah Smith SP, etc) has a gorgeous tourist website here. Fortuna’s tourism site is here, emphasizing affordability.  The North Coast Tourism Council also has its own site (seems like some of these ought to get together…).

The Youtube channel for Redwoodcoaster has a large selection of videos about tourist spots in the redwoods, as well as some humorous riffs on bigfoot.

News of the Humboldt County Area: The Arcata Eye is a local weekly paper with the world’s best police logs and also gives good coverage of the Arcata area’s progressive politics.  Also see the Northcoast Journal, a longstanding alt weekly that has a spiffed up website. They do some great feature articles on local issues and communities.  The newspaper of record for the area is the Eureka Times-Standard, which has all the latest news of the day on their web site or their print edition, available in most supermarkets in the area.

Santa Cruz County resources: For those taking the southern tack, check out the main Santa Cruz tourism site here.  The Beach Boardwalk amusement park is here, and they do have concerts out there on the beach. Tons of fun.  San Mateo County, just north of Santa Cruz, includes Half Moon Bay and Ano Nuevo (elephant seals) and has a tourism site here.

And the main California tourism site is nicely done, but most content is for southern and central California.