Day 2 - Redwood Regional Forest

This visit was such a renewing experience. The past few weeks have been emotionally hard on me for some reason, yet as I walked up the first path, barely out of sight from the parking lot, this is what I saw:

And yes, I got all teary. True, these redwoods are not the monsters that can be in other regions where conditions favor their growth. However, they still had that quiet majesty that I imagined Redwoods have. The eternal hum of the nearby highway near our house and the ruckus from construction a block away was hardly a memory here. I could hear voices and the happy shrieks from nearby summer day campers and yet there was that underlying stillness that you only find when you are amidst great amount of biomass to damper the background static of modern life.


So here I wandered for a good portion of an afternoon. A lot of it did happen to be aimless wondering (I had no map!) but it didn't matter. If you have no destination, then it can be incredibly relaxing.

Once I finally located a map, I decided to hike to the top of the noted Redwood Peak. It wasn't a very hard climb at all. At the top was several boulders and a United States Geological Survey (USGS) marker officially marking the highest point of the peak.

View of the peak:

USGS Marker:

I attempted to continue on a path identified as the Redwood Peak trail. However, as I discovered why my initial hike to the peak was easy - I had parked in a location that was already elevated. The Redwood Peak trail heading north away from the peak turned out to be a downhill hike to the nearby Redwood Creek. The map I had indicated that the trail to the creek was "only" bit over a half mile, so I figured I could take it without much effort.

Yeah. I think I got about halfway down the trail before realizing, I would have to come back UP that way. The trail spanned a 700 foot elevation change within that short half mile, so as I forgot to factor in, it was pretty steep. And seeing as I already used a lot of my energy by wandering aimlessly, I decided to try it again another day.

Here is a link to the map of the Redwood Regional Park. You can see the trail I took is just to the north of the area named Redwood Bowl.