Redwood National and State Parks Self-Guided Audio Driving Tour

Our next major Redwoods attraction is Crescent Beach, and oh boy, do I hope we stop here. Now, this isn’t a beach in the “beach balls and hot dog stands and splashing around in the water” sense of the word. This is a very wild and rugged stretch of coastline, with sea stacks and fast currents and very cold water.

Buy once, use for one year! Ideal for extended visits and return trips over the next 12 months.

The Crescent City Information Center downtown serves as one of the visitor centers for the parks, where there are rangers on hand to answer questions. We can also take a stroll out on the B Street Pier for expansive Pacific Ocean views, or visit the Battery Point Lighthouse and Museum.

If we want to hike the Trestle Loop Trail, this next left turn into Mill Creek Campground is for us. The trailhead for the easy 30 minute loop is after you cross the second bridge.

Did anybody think that the Damnation Creek Trail I told you about a few minutes ago sounded like a great idea? That’s the very steep one that drops from redwood groves to the ocean.

Let me quickly mention a visitor attraction coming up called Trees of Mystery. It’s definitely not a must-do, but the place does have a couple of cool features that give you a birds’-eye view of the redwood forest. There’s an aerial walkway winding through the canopy, about 100 feet up, and a gondola ride up a mountainside for some nice views.

We have a few big destinations coming up, all right around the Klamath River. This is a significant waterway, flowing more than 250 miles from the Cascade Mountains in southern Oregon to meet the Pacific just up ahead.

If we want to see the view at Klamath River Overlook using the shorter 5-minute drive, our turn is coming up on the right, on Requa Road.

Have you ever seen an old photo of someone driving a car right through a living tree? Maybe in old Yosemite or Sequoia photos? Or even a new photo of someone doing that, for that matter? Well, it turns out there are only a handful of places where this is possible, and there's one coming up, just off the highway.

If we’re going to Prairie Creek Visitor Center, or any of the hikes I mentioned before, then now’s the time to get into the right lane for our right-hand turn.

This will get us to Fern Canyon and Gold Bluffs Beach. Just a reminder that between mid-May and mid-September we need to have reserved a free permit to park at these locations.

There are several destinations along Bald Hills Road, including the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, another beautiful stand of old-growth redwoods. A bit beyond that we’ll reach the Redwood Creek Overlook, where we’ll get incredible views across both old-growth and second-growth forests, and if we’re lucky, maybe even a glimpse of the rare California condor.

The Lady Bird Johnson Grove is significant for more than just its spectacular stand of old-growth redwoods. It was the site of two major ceremonies, the first being the official dedication of the new Redwoods National Park in 1968.

The Redwood Creek Trail is coming up, and it’s a lovely place to wander through a red alder, bigleaf maple, and trillium forest. It goes fully 8 miles, all the way to Tall Trees Grove, though hiking that in one day would be a big effort indeed.

The last of the park’s visitor centers is coming up soon. Kuchel Visitor Center has a lovely oceanfront location and several small exhibits about this area’s original inhabitants, including the Yurok, Tolowa, Hupa, and Chilula people.

If you want to really impress your friends, this small body of water just west of the highway is called a lagoon. That’s defined as an enclosed body of water near the ocean.