A day among the giants.

After ten minutes on the Pacific Coast Highway, I hit California. It’s a bittersweet feeling to be back in my home state.

[back in Cali]

A few miles into California I come across a herd of elk hanging out on someone’s front yard. They are surprisingly large as are their antlers. Their presence so close to the road quickly attracts a slew of passers-by stopping to snap photos of them.

[roadside elk]

I stop by the Redwood Park information center in Crescent City, CA to pick up a map of the park. The friendly ranger behind the desk asks me if he can be of any assistance. When I ask him if there are any roads he would suggest, he scrawls a circle around Howland Hill Road on my map and tells me: “if you don’t mind dust and rocks, and you really want to see big trees, this is where you wanna go!” He also recommends a very remote spot to camp before I hit the road with the map he scribbled on.

The only sign as I turn onto the road reads: motor homes and trailers prohibited. It doesn’t take long for the pavement to end and the skinny dusty road begins weaving around the bases of gargantuan redwood trees. The road is only wide enough for one vehicle, so oncoming cars must negotiate over little pullovers to pass each other. The scale of the trees and my proximity to them is mind blowing. The back of the map the friendly ranger gave me notes that they grow to a height of 380 feet and live to 2,000 years. They are so tall and densely packed I can’t really see to the top of the larger ones.

[Howland Hill Road]

[very large redwood]

[redwood halo]

[see my bike at the base for scale]

[my reaction]

The winding road dumps me onto a paved road called South Fork Road. I don’t make it very far before I’m stopped for road construction by a guy wearing a hardhat and puffing on a cigarette. While we wait for the go-ahead, he tells me that he hates working on the road that goes nowhere. I inquire and he describes that the road is a thirty mile long deadend because the required clearances haven’t been granted by a Native American tribe to connect it at the other end. “Nobody uses this thing, have a blast on it!” he tells me as he waves me by. The new pavement perfectly paralleling a winding stream of turquoise meltwater is indeed completely empty and so much fun to ride on. I hit the campsite the ranger pointed me to and it’s also pretty much empty.

[South Fork Road]

[road to the campsite]

After setting up my tent, I get back on the bike and head down the road to find a place to jump in the river. I discover an awesome pool of ice-cold water that feels perfect on the 80 degree day. Jumping off the rocks into the frigid water is a lot of fun and a great way to end the day.

[frigid swimming hole]