"Here are trees that have already stood for a millennium or two--and still their lives will outlast yours a thousand years." This stunning statement is an excerpt from Philip Hyde and Frangois Leydet's Sierra Club's "Last Redwoods" book. On the fourth leg of our "tall tree" adventure, you may ponder the aforementioned quote's significance while meandering 40 minutes along a narrow gravel road that takes you through Douglas firs, rhododendrons, and some of the tallest redwoods in the Redwood National Park. As you drive through this incredible grove of giants, the trees are so towering it strains your neck to peer up at their tops, and only if you sit among them for a while, listening to the high-up branches blow and squeak in the breeze, can you truly begin to take in their immensity.
Moving out of the majestic Redwoods, you will encounter treasures of a different kind. Returning to U.S. 101, you will travel a couple miles north to Davison Road. If your vehicle can make the long, unpaved seven mile drive down Davison Road, your eyes are in luck. You'll encounter Fern Canyon, a secluded, rocky grotto on Home Creek that is a paradise of ferns growing on 50-foot-high canyon walls. There's also an excellent chance of seeing magnificent Roosevelt elk. Plus, there's Gold Bluffs Beach, a pristine, windswept stretch of sand along the Pacific, where you can beachcomb and walk for miles.
Last, there's a coastal trail along which you can view three waterfalls. If you want to see these falls, you need only walk (or ride your bike) 1.5 miles out from the parking lot at the end of Davison Road.
Photo of Roosevelt Elk by Mike Dierken.
