We camped our first night at Humboldt Redwoods State Park. This was a lovely little campground in the middle of the Humboldt Redwoods, an area that covers 53,000 acres and contains an old-growth redwood forest that is the largest expanse of ancient redwoods left on the planet. Logging was active in this area in the 1900s and in the 1920s, the first grove was purchased by the founders of Save the Redwoods League. They continued to purchase land and expand the park. I’m grateful they had the foresight to preserve these beautiful trees that we can still enjoy a hundred years later.

Humboldt Redwoods State Park lies along the Avenue of the Giants, a 31 mile stretch of road that parallels Highway 101 and the Eel River between Phillipsville and Stafford. The road was originally built for logging, but now takes visitors on a scenic ride through a patchwork of redwood groves, hardwood forests, and sleepy logging towns (emphasis on the sleepy - there isn’t much in this area as far as development - which is great for getting out and enjoying nature). We drove part of the Avenue of the Giants on our way to the campground and drove the rest of it the next day. We enjoyed the views from the drive and also stopped at four different groves to walk among the redwoods. This website was useful in picking out some walks: Redwood Hikes

Our first stop was Founders’ Grove, the largest and most impressive stand of redwoods on the Avenue of the Giants. This also makes it the most visited grove in Humboldt Redwoods - so we visited this one first to hopefully avoid any crowds (we probably didn’t need to worry about that - the redwoods overall were not busy at all when we visited). Right by the parking lot is the Founders’ Tree, which at one time had the title of tallest known tree in the world (it is 346.1 feet tall). Another large tree, the Dyerville Giant, was 370 ft tall before it fell in 1991. We walked the Founders’ Grove Nature Trail and the Mahan loop. This was an impressive grove - we were constantly stopping to admire these beautiful giants.

The Rockefeller Grove is located on a side road off of Avenue of Giants, and although it is a smaller grove, it can be more quiet than Founders’ Grove. Indeed, we did have it to ourselves. This grove had a groundcover of redwood needles which was in contrast to the lush redwood sorrel groundcover of the Greig-French-Bell Grove that we visited next. Our final stop was to walk the Drury-Chaney Loop, which was the longest trail we walked at 2.4 miles. This grove also had a lot of greenery with the sorrel and ferns and we spotted a banana slug on the trail.

Although we didn’t have a lot of time to spend in the redwoods, I’m glad we had a little taste before we hiked the Lost Coast. The redwood groves were beautiful and the trees were truly impressive.