Redwood National Park

The giant redwoods of the Northern California coast are revitalizing. The second I smelled the ocean air and saw the enormous trunks my travel fatigue disappeared. These forests are a place like no other.

Step off the Redwood Highway into any of the numerous big tree groves and you see, feel, and smell a prehistoric realm of nourishment where death replenishes life and trees just keep growing and growing and growing. Until they fall and give life to new trees.

The groves also create the illusion of being miniaturized. After having so recently been among pine forests with trees 30 or so feet high, to suddenly be in a place where the trees approach 300 feet created a sense that I was about a tenth the height I was at Yellowstone or Glacier.

Redwood National Park, stretching along the Northern California coast from Crescent City to McKinleyville, is actually a collection of several state parks that receive federal funding. After spending way more than I was used to on gas in Crescent City, I stopped at a beach and dipped my hand into the waters of the Pacific.

So far this year, I've touched the Atlantic Ocean (St. Augustine) and now the Pacific Ocean (Crescent City) and been within sight of Mexico (Big Bend National Park) and Canada (Glacier National Park). Not a bad year of travel. And there are still six more months to go.

Back in my car I, continued on the Redwood Highway to the Drury Scenic Parkway and spent a few hours walking among the tallest trees in the world. I stopped at Corkscrew Tree and Big Tree then took the bumpy one-lane dirt road to Gold Bluffs Beach and Fern Canyon, a short but still stunning trail through leaf-adorned canyon walls.