Five Things to Know Before Coming to Redwood National Park

I preface this list with the disclaimer that this is, of course, not official. For that, please see www.nps.gov/redw. There is also a nice site, http://redwoodhikes.com/ that has information on the many redwood parks and their miles and miles of hiking trails.

Alrighty, let’s get on with the list:

1. The Tallest Tree

The tallest tree in the world is indeed a coast redwood [Sequoia sempervirens] and it just so happens to be in Redwood National Park, but don’t be fooled, it is not in the Tall Trees area. There is no trail out to Hyperion, the tallest tree on the planet at 379 feet and some inches. But, please, don’t be too disappointed. This tree likely won’t hold the record forever. Not to mention, standing at the base of it, it would be impossible to see the top; its base isn’t the widest of the trees either and one could likely walk past it never knowing which tree it was.

So why hide the tallest tree? Aside from the facts stated above, it is likely that increased foot traffic around the base of these tall trees does significant damage to their shallow root systems. When the roots are damaged, the tree starts to die. The top that fell off the top of the world’s former record holder could likely be attributed to adoring fans walking on the roots.

One other note: I mentioned the Tall Trees Trail above. If you are in a hurry, or don’t feel like walking a 4 mile round trip trail that goes down an 800 foot hill and back up, there are *plenty* of other options to see tall trees, ancient trees, you name it. In fact, there are only a dozen or so redwoods on that trail, so if you want to see many, many redwoods, check at the visitor centers for other options that are shorter, or even longer, whatever you prefer.

Tall, Tall Redwoods on Trillium Falls Trail

2. State and National Parks

When you look at a map of Redwood National and State Parks, you are going to see a narrow, but very long park that stretches from Crescent City to South of Orick. The National Park boundary goes around three different state parks, due to the fact that the National Park was created in the late 60s, enlarged in the late 70s, with the idea of absorbing the state parks. Popular opinion at the time stopped that and today the State and National Parks are run in cooperation. You’ll find state park rangers in the National Park and national park rangers in the State Parks. In terms of who has the best redwoods, it’s hard to judge, but the state parks do have the most easily accessible forests as well as the most trails. That brings me to the third point:

3. Take the Parkway!

Often, I meet people travelling South that drove the 40 some miles from Crescent City and didn’t know to take the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway. This parkway cuts through Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and if you came to see the redwoods when you were a child, you most likely drove this road since it is old Highway 101. While the speed limit is slower, continuing on Highway 101 will take you up a large hill [requiring more gas] and add a few more miles, plus you’ll miss out on all the redwoods!  Along the Scenic Parkway, there are many places to pull over, even hike a trail, and a very nice CCC-era visitor center tucked in Elk Prairie awaits you at the southern end of the parkway.

A Looming Redwood on the Boy Scout Tree Trail

4. Expect Fog

If you are visiting during the peak season [summer], expect fog [technically, it's stratus], but don’t let that ruin your trip! Some of the best redwood photographs are taken on foggy days when the sun breaks through and sends shafts of light into the canopy [I haven't been that lucky yet!]. It is an extremely beautiful scene. When there are no clouds, the sun makes it very difficult for even the best cameras out there to deal with the dark shade of the redwoods and the brightness of the sky. The photos will likely end up very dark. Either flash or a tripod are the best ways to cope with the darkness of the redwoods.

Related to the fog, the climate here is very cool. Sweatshirts or even coats are a must for most visitors, some of which opt to buy a sweatshirt just for their visit!

5. Play Safe!

Of course no one wants their vacation to become a medical emergency, but there are a fair number of things to watch out for in the redwoods [no, not Sasquatch!].

Windy days can send branches from the canopy to the ground with amazing force–enough to send the branch 5 feet into the ground. Best to find some other activity on extremely windy days. Luckily, they don’t happen too often in the summer!

Roosevelt Elk are a popular attraction in the redwoods. They gracefully graze in many parts of the park, but they can show their ugly sides without warning. Make sure to give elk a generous distance, especially the females in Spring and the males in the Fall.  Their tempers seem to flair the worst at those times, but the presence of RVs, dogs, bicycles and who knows what else can set them off. The mass of 1000 lbs charging at you probably isn’t the best way to spend your vacation…

Roosevelt Elk in Elk Prairie

And finally, although it does not occur too often in the summer, sneaker waves are always a concern. The Pacific Ocean here is cold, around 40 to 50 degrees, and the waves are often large. Every now and then, one larger wave will run up the beach higher than any of the other waves, sometimes surpassing the rest by dozens of feet.  It creates a dangerous, and at the very least, unpleasant, situation for anyone too close to the surf. The force of the waves is hard to escape, and if pulled out to sea, heaven forbid, belly crawling while catching breaths after a wave passes is the best way to survive.

On a lighter note, if you do happen to see Sasquatch, some cryptobiologists are looking for him. Someone needs to give him the message!

Whose Park Is It, Anyway?

I start off by saying the usual disclaimer that these following words are my thoughts and represent NOTHING official.

After hearing about an incident between a law enforcement ranger with a taser and a dog walker visiting a newly acquired National Park Service unit in San Francisco, I sighed. There is so much time used up enforcing laws, why not just respectfully enjoy nature? Seriously, when a cop pulls you over, what do you do?? It’s the same with park law enforcement!

But then again, that’s why I’m not in law enforcement. There have been so many times that I have approached people with dogs [or people breaking any number of rules or laws], and they’ve either blown me off, acted like they were going to comply and then sneak away, or, in the times I cringe the most, argued. Not that my job is -that- hard, but a taser would make things so much easier [yea, right...I'd probably just cry instead]. I wouldn’t have to waste so much breathe and time trying to protect resources.

But then a few weeks after hearing about the incident, I stumbled upon an NPR article: Who’s A Park For? Dog Owners Fight Park Service. Of course, my hackles raise, with a traumatic hostage training session [officially called "Active Threat" training] still at the top of my thoughts. Seeing coworkers get shot by soft pellets was a little much for me. It’s no secret that parks and ‘gateway towns’ across the country have their differences–just look at Yellowstone, Cape Hatteras, and now apparently Golden Gate. My park isn’t immune either, hence the graphic training session. The part of training that hit me the hardest, and the part that seems nearly ironic, is that there are people trained and willing to put their lives at risk to act as the thin green line when things get *that* bad–to save those that are caught in the crossfire. Over what would someone be willing to throw themselves on an armed attacker? And for what would someone fatalistically storm a federal property, possibly throwing away innocent bystanders’ and their lives?  An idea. A stupid idea.

It’s nothing new that humans fight and die for ideas daily. It just strikes me as dumbfounding to do it in a park–a recreational setting where happy things are supposed to occur, not the total opposite! If emotions aren’t your cup of tea, then maybe the logical side might make more sense: the National Park Service’s mandate, the whole reason it exists, is to protect resources so that they may exist and be enjoyed now and in future generations. Spelled out by the Organic Act, it goes like this:

The mission of the National Park Service “is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life herein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

The whole Park Service system is touted as “America’s Best Idea” [don't talk to Canadians about that--they did it first!], and yet, we can’t seem to agree to agree on it! I’m sure most people are aware of the conflict involving the wolves at Yellowstone. Arguments between parks and communities range from how to “best” use a piece of land, to what wildlife should be there, to variations between. Where I am dumbfounded is how people get so confused…these parks were created by an act of Congress [you know, for the people, by the people] to preserve [not conserve] some natural thing of beauty and all the other, maybe not so beautiful but just as important, other things within the park’s boundary. And by preserve, it isn’t meant that these things remain pretty just while one visits.

These parks are investments.

When the rest of the country is as built up as the suburbs of Paris, at least wildlife will have a tiny piece of land to huddle in. And while a person may not understand the value of one plant species or one bird species or one pocket gopher species, there is thankfully a professional scientist out there trying to save these endangered species, not to mention the ecosystem as a whole! So to be angry because a certain activity was deemed as detrimental to a resource within the park boundary and banned is absurd! Would it not be a violation of the Organic Act, of the whole reason the park is there in the first place, to allow visitors to walk their dogs, ride their bikes, poach elk, drive all over the beach, pet the bison, feed the prairie dogs and stellar’s jays, run over snakes, pick flowers, and carve on redwoods.

Don’t argue…I’m just trying to do my job. Now, where did I put my taser!?

Life is a Beach

I’ve had some trouble with idioms and sayings. I was recently surprised when I posted a photo of my dog on her back at the beach [her submissive 'rub my tummy' pose] with the caption that she’s “died and gone to heaven” [with an exclamation point, I believe] and had to field comments about condolences for her passing. Oops. I guess people take me pretty literally…

To keep with this tongue-in-cheek literalness, how about ‘life is a beach’…I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. My guess is that people mean that life is easy, lazy, warm, sandy and one big vacation. I haven’t met that life. Not that life has been particularly hard or easy, nor that I hate life, but a beach isn’t the first thing I’d pair with the word life, eh.

Eh…?

On second thought, I suppose it depends on which way you look at the beach. Let’s start with the sand.

Sands in Various Forms: Beach Sand, Seaglass, and Melted Sand from long-gone Tipi Kilns.

Most sand is essentially recycled mountains. Erosional processes that have worked tirelessly at the seemingly sturdy rocks, breaking them down into teeny pieces that will eventually become…rocks again, perhaps. Here on the North Coast of California, the mountains are sea floor sediments mushed together like mounds of mash potatoes. Decayed rocks that have reformed new rocks.

Now about the stuff that washes up on the beach. Sea foam is something you’ll find on these beach often. The ubiquitous muck is mostly protein. The meringue-like substance originates from who knows where–dead creatures, dead plants, but comes together to form the white froth that stains our shoes. Eventually it will be broken down or taken up and reformed into something else other than the froth, much like the sand.

There are much larger things that wash up, of course. Logs of all sorts and cuts appear on the beach and embody the life of driftwood. The wood wasn’t always drifting, instead being seemingly sturdily rooted in the ground, perhaps far away from the beach. I have heard some of this driftwood is left from the time when the cutters came to take away the redwoods to other far off ports. Some of the trees were destined to make houses in Hawaii and elsewhere, while some abandoned ship and took up the marine life of floating around the Pacific. Some of the driftwood has for sure originated from Redwood Creek, washing down eventually to be deposited on the beach and taken away when the Ocean wants it back. The wood will take its slow time to break down, all the while housing various creatures and tempting visitors to take home the most wave-battered planks.

Other forms of life are represented on the beach by either their presence or remnants. I haven’t seen a grebe or rhinoceros auklet on this stretch of coast recently, but then again, I am pretty sure these two didn’t step foot onto this beach while alive either.  They will be food for many creatures until they cease to exist in their previous form, continuing on as particles of other creatures and the environment. The presence of life is sometimes hard to detect on these beaches. Some days, birds, beach fleas, and clams are obvious; other days a desert-like hush lurks beneath the crashing waves and pelting rain.

Now, it has been said that there are several types of people in this world and that it takes all kinds to make the world go ’round. I couldn’t agree more! The beach where I spend half my working hours is a prime example of that. There are those who come and plop a beach chair down or stand for a long time to admire the view, escape the troubling thoughts and bustle of their lives.  Sometimes they bring a book. Another type that comes doesn’t come for relaxation, but to investigate, to hunt for answers and insight into the drama that unfolds on the beach. Whichever way we choose to enjoy the beach, it’s a short visit in the grand scheme of things.  And in either case, life’s a beach for us all.

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