Redwood National Park

 Wednesday, September 1 - It was a 4 hour drive from Crater Lake to Redwood National Park, quite a beautiful drive on a windy road through the redwoods.  We had booked 3 nights at Elk Prairie Campground which is part of the State Park system.  The Redwood park system is co-managed by both the national and state parks.  Within Elk Prairie there are many great hiking trails.  After setting up camp we did an evening hike to "The Big Tree".  It was a 4 mile round trip hike from our campground.

That's a big tree

Hiking through a Redwood

Beautiful bridges throughout the park redwood planks

Tree growing on top of a tree

The "Big Tree" 

286 ft high 

23 ft in diameter 

74 ft circumference

1500 years old

Our campsite at Elk Prairie State Park

Thursday, September 2 - We decided to do a big loop hike through the Murrelet State Wilderness today.  We took Miner's Ridge Trail, to Clintonia Trail to the James Irving Trail, for a total of 7 miles.  We left at 9:30, so the first couple of hours we had the hike to ourselves.  It was pretty amazing, one grove of big trees after another, and lots of quiet quiet hiking.

The roots of a fallen Redwood

Friday, September 3 - Today we drove 101 down to Davison Road, a 5 mile mostly one lane dirt road that winds up through the woods to Gold Bluff Beach.  We parked at the beach parking lot and got our bikes out to ride 2.5 miles to Fern Canyon.  There is a very popular .6 mile loop along the canyon creek bed, over lots of wooden planks to keep you out of the creek.  The ferns cover the canyon walls above making it a quite unique hike.  Scenes from Jurassic Park were filmed here.  We rode our bikes back to the RV and had lunch on the beach.  We decided to hang out here through dinner, in hopes we would have an easy drive down the one lane road, since the park closes at sundown.  We only met 3 cars, and luckily had no issues.  At the bottom of the mountain, as we were turning back onto 101, there was a whole herd of Roosevelt Elk in the meadow.  Was fun to sit and watch them for a bit.

Fern Canyon Hike, through the creek

50 foot canyon walls covered in ferns

Ferns and more ferns

bike back to the RV through 2 streams

Foggy day on the coast

Lunch on the beach

Davison Road, down the mountain 

Roosevelt Elk next to the road

Last Day at Crater Lake

 Tuesday August 31st - We woke up early to catch the sunrise, at Rim Village.  The smoke had cleared significantly from the night before, giving us a beautiful sunrise over the lake.  

Sunrise from Rim Village.  

Our breakfast view and then a game of Catan dice

 

After the sunrise we drove to the Cleetwood Cove hike down to the lake, which is the only lake access.  The hike is around 1.1 mile each way although the uphill seemed much farther :)  It took us 20 min to hike down and 40 min to hike up. 

The hike had an elevation change of 700 ft so there were lots and lots of switchbacks

The water is the clearest in the world.  You can see down to almost 150 ft

Finally getting close to the bottom

We jumped in from the dock (and had a Hobart & William Smith alum that took great pics as we jumped)

And it was a refreshing 60 degrees

Wet but happy we did it!

Here's the GoPro view that Kevin took as we jumped.

Next we did the Rim trail from the Rim village.  Which was an easy hike with many many beautiful spots for more unnecessary pics, but I couldn't help myself

A little hazy later in the day, but so much better than yesterday

Crater Lake

 Sunday August 29, 2021 - We got to Crater Lake around noon, after a 3 hr drive from the rest area.  We checked into our campsite at Mazama Campground, which is part of the park system.  The campground has around 200 sites, some with electric (ours doesn't), and they are all large, nicely separated, with lots of trees.  

 

We decided to do the 33 mile rim drive, to get oriented to the park.  There are many pull offs to see the lake, each with their own unique view. Crater Lake was formed 7700 years ago when the volcano Mazama, erupted. The caldera that was left after the explosion filled with precipitation.  There are no streams that run into the lake so there is very little sediment to cloud the water, making it the purest water you can find. The lake level is very consistent and varies by only a few feet.  Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the US at 1943 ft.  It holds 5 trillion gallons of water.  Wizard Island is a large cylinder cone, that was formed during the volcanic eruption.  Usually you can take a boat to the island, but there is no boat service due to COVID.  

Our first view of Crater Lake

We took a detour off the rim drive, to Pinnacles road.  This is a 6 mile road out to Pinnacles overlook.  There was a 1 mile hike to view the Pinnacles, which are chimneys formed when hot ash cooled after the eruption.

Pinnacles (fumaroles)

Next we did the Plaikni Falls trail, which was a 2 mile hike, out to the falls and back.

Plaikni Falls

lots of wild flowers

As the day went on it got smokier, and by evening it even smelled like smoke.  The air quality hit a high of 220.   The drive back into the campground was especially smokey.

 

Monday, August 30, 2021 - We got up early today to drive out to a sunrise lookout.  The air quality was better than yesterday (only about 180), but it was still pretty hazy.  Not the best sunrise pics, but still pretty cool.

The tip of Wizard Island, on the left, poking up above the smoke

The reflection of the sun on the lake, looks like fire

Since it was so hazy, we decided to do a few hikes that were close to the campground.  We road our bikes to the Annie Springs trailhead.  This was a half a mile hike straight up the mountain, once at the top it linked up with the Pacific Coast Trail.  This part of the PCT was relatively flat, and quite scenic through lots of old growth 100 ft trees.

PCT marking with a reflector, for night hiking.  Not quite as iconic as the AT white blaze hand painted by diligent trail maintainers :)

Now we can say we've hiked the PCT!

After lunch we hiked Annie Creek trail, a 1.7 mile hike down the canyon behind our campground.  There was a nice pamphlet that we took with us, and read about various things along the trail as we hiked.  It was a beautiful hike along the creek, and the hike up the canyon was a lot, but well worth it.

more pinnacles along the creek