Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

Posted by Karen on 28-May-2010

(Click photo for all 94 photos)

I arrived in Eureka last night and settled in at the Redwood Acres Fairground for the long weekend. Today I headed north towards Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and along the way I stopped in McKinleyville for a geocache at the World’s Largest Totem Pole and boy is it tall! Just before the park I spotted a herd of Roosevelt Elk resting in a field and I’m glad I stopped to view them because they certainly weren’t at the designated viewing area on Davison Road in the park (maybe they didn’t get the memo about where to be, hmm). Davison Road took me to Gold Bluff’s Beach and finally to Fern Canyon. Fern Canyon is where parts of Jurassic Park 2, The Lost World were filmed and yes, it does all look very pre-historic. Fern Canyon is just that, a tall narrow canyon will lots of ferns growing up the canyon walls. At this time of year, the creek flowing through the canyon is still flowing pretty good and after about 5 minutes I gave up any notion of being able to dodge the water and resigned my self to just having wet feet, but it’s worth it. At the trail head, I met another solo hiker with a camera named Christina and so we headed off together to walk the canyon. The canyon is only about 1/3 of a mile long, but it’s a very cool walk. At the end of the canyon, I looped around to another (dry) trail and made my way back to the SUV. At the parking lot, there were a couple of Roosevelt Elk grazing and you realize that they really are big animals when you’re semi-close to them. On the way back to the trailer, I stopped and enjoyed a bit of the sunset in Trinidad at the memorial lighthouse.