The tale of a distressed American town on the doorstep of a natural paradise
A few weeks ago, my partner and I drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and headed up Highway 101 for about six hours to visit a spectacular sliver of America. Nestled along roughly 40 miles of Northern California coastline, Redwood National and State Parks is a sprawling park system — three state parks and one national park — housing 133,000 acres of natural wonders. It boasts stunning lagoons, rivers, and beaches, eye-popping hiking and biking trails, a rich array of wildlife, and some of the oldest and tallest trees on the planet.
We hiked the James Irvine Trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, which has got to be one of the best hikes on the West Coast. The trail starts with a wooden bridge over a flowing creek and instantly leads you into groves of enormous redwood trees. The trees are thousands of years old, with heights as tall as the Statue of Liberty and diameters as wide as 18 feet. They are marvels of evolution, communicating, cooperating, and sharing resources with each other through root systems. They have bark so thick that they can survive scorching wildfires. Scientists trace redwood ancestry back 160 million years, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth.
Meandering miles through this breathtaking primeval forest, the trail leads to Fern Canyon. It's a place so otherworldly that Steven Spielberg chose it as a setting for The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Passing through Fern Canyon, we reached grasslands where we came face to face with a gang of Roosevelt elk. After nervously circumventing the gang, we arrived at Gold Bluffs Beach, where we gazed upon a rocky, forested coast jutting out into the sparkling Pacific Ocean. I cannot recommend this hike enough.
