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A Redwood Road Trip

Discover the Gentle Giants of Northern California

By Teri Brown

As vacations go, road trips are risky propositions. They can either be a wonderful time of family bonding or you can get home and find that no one in the family is talking to anyone else. Road trips are for the adventurous at heart, and my children and I are nothing if not adventurous. My husband, who is not, happily gave up his place in the car to Grandma and smiled broadly as we drove away. We were off, my two teenagers in the back and my mother in the front. (It could have been worse, but we left the dog at home.) Our destination: the Giant Redwoods of Northern California.

As Oregonians, we are right next door to the Redwood Forest of Woody Guthrie fame, but we had never spent time amongst the silent giants that grow with such determination. What we think of as the Redwood Forest is actually comprised of several parks that run down the Northern California Coast. These are the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, the Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and the Redwood National Park. These parks encompass 45 percent of all the old growth redwood forest remaining in California.

We made a beeline for the Oregon Coast and then headed south down Highway 101, surely one of the most spectacular coastal roads in the United States. Highway 101 is a beautiful way to see the redwoods, as the trees follow the backdrop of the Pacific Ocean. We made it to Brookings the first day, a good-sized town on the Oregon/California border. The Redwoods actually stretch up into the far Southwest corner of Oregon, but we were excited to get to the parks.

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