Hwy 101 runs along a ridge just south of Crescent City. Mill Creek campground is in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park and lies down on the eastern side. Like all the redwood parks, very shady. At the entrance kiosk I asked about trail conditions and was given a laminated map that I could take a photo of. A number of trails were closed due to bridges being washed out. We set out to see how bad the washouts were.
Trestle loop trail got us as far as Mill Creek but there was not even a sign of a washed out bridge. We could have taken our boots off and waded the shallow creek and searched for the trail continuation on the other side but I was coming to the realization that the bridges were low on maintenance and when they break the trail is simply closed – pity.
Next day we wanted to do a loop around Hobbs Wall but the eastern half was marked closed so we did the out & back up to the ridge near the highway. The one advantage of the hike was a weak cell signal on the ridge to check email as the campground had neither sun (no solar) nor cell service.
On the way down to visit the river again we stopped off for a short hike around the Yurok Loop trail.
This time we tried out the Golden Bear RV park. Got to park right on the river but we were closer to the Hwy and therefore more noise. A number of our neighbors were here for the salmon runs and planned to stay for 2 to 3 months, real diehard fishermen.
We got the bikes out and after a brief section on the Hwy we got onto Requa road and headed out for the overlook.
After the river it was another short drive to our final redwoods stop, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. On the way in we stopped off for a hike and made a 10 mile loop of interconnecting trails.
Over near Gold Bluffs Beach is a popular attraction called Fern Canyon. The problem for us is that we only have the RV with us and the road to Gold Bluffs has a 24′ length limit and we are slightly longer than that. But if you look at a map there is a convenient trail from the campground to Fern Canyon, the James Irvine trail which is about a 10 mile round trip.
OK, we’ll do that, pack a lunch and make an early’ish start. Good trail, plenty of trees and not too many other hikers. Now I had not done too much research into the canyon other than see on the map that the trail makes a loop where the attraction is.
We hike the trail to the beach side and see that everyone (who did the much shorter walk from the beach) is walking up the river into the canyon. The canyon is cute with vertical fern covered walls but we soon tire of hopping around trying to keep our boots dry. Yes, I should have realized this and brought water shoes but we’ll leave that for a future return trip.
Pack up the next morning and head south stopping to visit my brother and his wife, Martina, in Ukiah.
