The Mighty Redwoods

I’ve seen many old large trees in my time, but none have ever excited me as much as when people mention the Redwoods. I’ve been dying to go for years, and have been obsessing over videos and photos I kept noticing online. So it’s not an exaggeration at all when I say this was my most looked forward to destination during our road rip.

Since our couchsurf host used to do trail maintenance in the redwoods, we asked him about what spots he would recommended. We trusted his advice and headed to the Humboldt Redwoods State Park rather than the national park to the north.

The magical Coastal Highway 1 of California

The California coastal highway 1 and the Redwood Highway 101 both run between San Francisco and Arcata, so from Sacramento we headed due west to take highway 1 as far as possible. Since it mostly hugs the coast, and occassionally cuts to the hills and forests, the road winds a lot and going is very slow. The drive between Sacramento and Arcata was without a doubt the drive that took the longest – we left around noon and arrived in McKinleyville (bordering Arcata) at approximately 11pm… However, it was absolutely worth the ride! Word to the wise though even on a motorcycle, the 10 hours of windy roads, steep uphills and downhills really left me drained and I probably underestimated the ride a little, but it was a good stretch of road to conquer in the end.