2024 09 15 - Humboldt State Park - Myers Flat CA

One of the bigger trees we saw.

We had wanted to see some Redwoods while we were on vacation and had it on our list to stop at a grove near Santa Rosa where we had been staying. But we spent too much time on the coast to fit it all in. But my wife and I still had the weekend after the others in our group left so we made a plan to go see them. The main redwoods were only three hours away ...

BUT, we hadn't done the math that to include driving 2+ hours each way to SFO before heading the three hours further north. So it we got to the parks later than we had planned.

The main one we stopped at was here, Humboldt State Park. The area is almost all flat and the main trails are indicated enough that they were easy to follow. If there were paved trails, we were not on them.

Based on when I took pictures, we were here about two hours hiking the trails and taking pictures. There were a couple of tour buses that got there just after us so there were a couple of large groups of people with the guide telling stories but we didn't listen in.

We did stop two more places, but not for long so I will include them in this write-up.

Our next stop was Thomas H Kuchel Visitor Center for the National and State Redwood parks. The address is Orick. This is a beach side visitors center. There are NOT redwoods nearby. (but there are restrooms)

Our thirds stop was the Elk Prairie Campground a few miles away. We didn't realize it before going there that the parking area is only for checking in and there is a time limit for parking there. We had noticed that there were cars parked on the street but we thought that was because the parking lot was full. No ... if you want to walk the trails but not stay in the campground, you need to park on the street. doesn't make sense to me. It's a park, there shoudl be parking for it.

So we just did a short walk that was within the allowed parking time and left. By now we were already watching the clock as far as how long it was going to take us to get back. We were over six hours from my next shipper.

The walk at Elk Prairie that we did was again mostly flat but not paved. If we come back to this location we would do more research on places to park and where to walk. The highway is only a 1/10th of a mile from the visitors center so that shouldn't be an issue but there are a lot of trails and here you can not just drive to the closest parking lot.

On our way to this park we saw a herd of elk but when we left there was only one left laying in the shade. We did get a picture of that one. I'm pretty sure I have pictures from when I was at this same campground 30 years ago with my kids and there was a herd of elk right at the park.