Written December 2018
Day 2
We woke up early today, so that we could make our way down to the Kuchel Visitor Center right when they opened. Our plan was to start off the day at the Tall Trees Grove to hike around there, but you need to get a permit, and there’s only so many that they give out each day. There was already about 10 or so people there before us, but not enough that we couldn’t get a permit. The forest ranger there convinced us not to go out there though…because it quite a long drive to make it out. Also, she said…even though one of the tallest trees in the world is there…you can’t even really tell. When you’re looking at trees over 300 ft tall…the difference between 50 ft isn’t really noticeable anyways…so she suggested other groves and trails closer in to check out instead, and we took her advice.
The first place that we decided to go to was the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. We were the first people there, and had the grove all to ourselves…. for maybe 10-15 minutes. There’s a loop trail of about 1.5 miles to go through the grove, but a lot of spots where you can go off trail some to explore a bit, so we actually wound up spending quite a bit of time here checking out the grove during the foggy morning.
Lady Bird Johnson Grove
After we made our way around Lady Bird, we decided to head over to the Elk Meadow to see Trillium Falls. Right next to the parking lot, there were a few Roosevelt Elk for us to see super close! Although we tried not to get too close so we wouldn’t get stabbed by their antlers and run over. The hike it self was fairly short…maybe a mile total…as we just turned around when we got to the falls…which unfortunately was not really impressive. The elk was definitely the highlight of this area… Oh…and a couple deer too!
Wildlife
Afterwards, we drove down into the beach to check out Fern Canyon. We decided not to hike down there because it would’ve been too long to go all the way down and back at that point. We stopped off at Gold Bluffs Beach though to eat our packed lunch there.
Trillium Falls and Gold Bluffs Beach
Post lunch, we drove a little bit more on the rough dirt road, and through a little stream which I was pretty nervous about getting stuck in…but we saw another smaller car go through it, so it seemed ok…and it thankfully was! Then once we made it to Fern Canyon, we talked through the little loop trail to take in the beauty of the ferns. We were a little tired now, so decided to go back out onto the beach out there, and took a nice little nap to rejuvenate ourselves for the rest of the afternoon.
Fern Canyon
Nice and refreshed, we drove back up through the dirt trails and up to the main road, where we looked for a medium length hike to do in the park. After driving for a bit…and getting a little bit lost…we made our way back onto the right road and found a good hike. It was about a 4.5 mile long loop…going on the Prairie Creek Trail, up the steep Zigzag 1 trail….to West Ridge…and then down the steep Zigzag 2 trail back to the car. We actually jogged a little bit of it, as time was starting to pass us by…definitely not on the zigzag trails though, as those were pretty steep!
Zigzag Loop Trail
Before heading back to our campsite, we decided to make a couple quick stops to see some tree highlights of the State Park…Corkscrew Tree and Big Tree. Thankfully, they were super easy to get to…not even sure if it was a 1/4 mile total to walk to and from each of the trees. It was at Big Tree though, where our minds were blown…we asked a family to take a picture of us here…and they showed us an awesome trick that we definitely took advantage of the next day…taking a panoramic photo going up the tree!!!!
Corkscrew Tree
Big Tree
After a long day of walking and looking up at big trees, it was finally time to get back to our campsite. We made some dinner…and again, can’t remember what we had… but afterwards, we made sat by our campfire and roasted some marshmellows and ask some s’mores before calling it a night!
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