Ana has been wanting to see redwoods for a few years now. I had experienced the redwoods as a teenager with my family, but nobody else in our household had. Spring break 2026 seemed like a good time to go (since we didn't have any ballroom kids with a competition during the weeklong break and Ana off track at college), so we made plans.
Saturday, March 21
We left home at 8:45 with Ana driving until Craters of the Moon. We stopped long enough to switch drivers and use the port-a-potties since the parts of the visitors center were under construction.
Miriam drove the next stretch from 10:15 to 11:30 until we got to Fairfield. Seth drove from there to Nampa while the girls watched Ana play Deltarune on her laptop. In Nampa we went to Costco to gas up and use the restroom, then Andrea took over as the driver and drove the rest of the way.
We checked into the Silver Spur Motel which is very much an old run-down hole-in-the wall kind of family motel situation. We had a queen, a double and a twin bed. Miriam and Winnie drew this short straws and had to share the double. The girls opted to stay in the room while Seth and I took a walk through the older part of town. We saw several stores that have been shut down permanently and others that are temporarily closed for one reason or another. We ended up at the cemetery and spent some time looking for headstones and gravesites that we could take pictures of to add to Find a Grave. Then we walked back to the hotel room. We had walked two and a half miles.
The family deliberated over a place to go for dinner, and we finally decided on one pizza place only to drive out there and find that they were closed for spring break. So we went to the one other pizza place in town and ordered an extra large with some garlic bread. We talked about the possibility of going to the one movie theater in town that has one showing of a movie every weekend, but we decided that would get us to bed too late (especially with the time change). So instead we watched half of the movie Independence Day in our hotel room. Our beds were on opposite walls, so Ana, Miriam and Winnie watched the movie on the TV in the hotel room while Dad and I watched it on the laptop. Then we got too tired and shut the movie off so we could go to sleep.
Andrea's view from the back of the van while Miriam was driving. The girls had a rotation for where they sat in the van ("middle seat," "leg room" and "squanch hole"). When the girls took their turns driving, the parents took turns riding shotgun while the other took the driver's spot in the seat rotation.
Andrea and Ana in the back seat. Ana had "leg room" while I had "squanch hole" named thus because it's directly behind a middle seat and has the least amount of leg room.
A wild sign Seth and Andrea saw while on their walk. I'm not sure how the different elements corollate with each other: a family with a baby, a chiropractic center, chimney sweeping and wood stoves?
Eating dinner together at the one open pizza joint.
Sunday, March 22
We all woke up somewhat early and took turns showering and ate some store-bought muffins that we had brought with us while sitting on a blanket on the floor of the hotel room. We piled into the van with Miriam driving for the first stretch and left the hotel shortly after 8:00. We gassed up and paid $4.90 a gallon in Burns. We had been driving about 10 minutes when Winnie remembered her water bottle that was stuck between the bed and the wall and had been left behind, so we turned around to go back for it.
I was riding shotgun and fulfilled Miriam's request for "some gum" when she told me, "There's blue frickin' right there, brah." Miriam prefers the peppermint gum (in the blue wrapper) while I prefer the sweet mint (in the green). Kids these days.
Miriam drove to Brothers, Oregon, and then Andrea drove. We had thought about going the shortest route that Google recommended, but we saw that it would take us on over a mile of unpaved roads and thought that was a little uncertain, so we ended up going north almost all the way to Bend before continuing southwest. We ate chicken salad sandwiches in the car, then Andrea switched with Ana somewhere in a beautiful foresty highway section of Oregon.
Ana drove for an hour and a half, then switch to Seth in White City. We stopped at a gas station and paid $5.15/gallon and tried to put air in the front passenger tire because we had had a light saying it was low all day. Instead, the coin-operated air dispenser would only let air out of our tire. We kept trying and trying to get it on and put air in, but it just let more and more out. In the end, we had to scour the town for a place to get air in the tire on a Sunday and ended up at a Jiffy Lube. We had to wait for two cars to get their oil changed before we could pull into the bay and get some air in that tire. But they didn't charge us anything. In fact, When Seth I see attendant if you owe them anything, he said, "Just a smile" and sent us on our way.
That setback lasted about an hour, so we got to our cabin in Klamath a little after 5 p.m. We found our cabin and were able to use the code to get inside. The cabin was very cute and a good fit for our family while we were there. It overlooked the Klamath River which leads to the ocean. As soon as we got here, we saw a river otter and a sea lion in the river right in front of our cabin. It was magical.
We unloaded the van and put everything away in the cabin. Seth, Winnie and I went on a little walk around the RV park and sat overlooking the river for a few minutes. We were going to have spaghetti for dinner; although I packed the spaghetti sauce, I forgot the pasta. So instead we had soup and crackers for dinner. We were supposed to eat that another night, so we swapped dinner plans for a later night and picked up some pasta when we did our grocery shopping later.
After dinner we finished watching Independence Day. Four of us sat on the futon. Seth sat on the lawn chair that we brought in from the front porch. Then we got ourselves ready and went to bed.
Picnic breakfast on the floor of our sketchy motel room.
The forest road where Ana and Andrea switched as drivers and we all got out to stretch our legs.
View of the Klamath River from the covered porch of our cabin at the RV park.
Inside the living room/kitchen of our cabin.
An incredible moth we found perched on our porch.
Winnie and Seth checking out the river.
Andrea walking along the river.
Winnie, Andrea and Seth sitting by the river.
Ana, Andrea and Winnie with the river.
Andrea and Winnie "reverse spooning" in the main bedroom of the cabin.
Ana tucked in to her bed.
Winnie in the top bunk and Ana in the bottom.
Monday, March 23
It's a good thing most of us were already awake when Winnie dropped her water bottle from the shelf next to her top bunk. Poor Miriam got startled awake with loud thunk when it hit the floor. We had breakfast of yogurt and granola and loaded up the van and headed to the Hiouchi Visitors' Center and Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park. We got there a couple minutes before the visitors' center opened, so we read some signage around the area about the area's plant life and then went in as the center opened. We looked at the few little exhibits they had there. Each of us except Seth got something from the gift shop: Ana got a pin, Miriam got two postcards, Andrea got a keychain and Winnie got a small license plate.
After that our plan was to go the short distance to the Stout Grove Memorial Trail Head, but some road must have been closed or something because the way we thought we were going to be able to go was not very close. We tried going along a trail that Seth had on his downloaded maps. We thought this map indicated that there would be a bridge across Smith River so that we could get to the Grove, but there was no bridge. We considered doffing our socks and shoes and wading across, but none of us had water shoes. The slippery rocks would not have been fun for walking on to cross the wide river. Everyone except me took off their socks and shoes, but I was skeptical. I was worried that it would get too deep and it would be too hard without water shoes. In the end, we decided to go back to our car and drive all the way around so that we could access the rest of the park from the side that was accessible.
We had read at the visitor center that low tide was in the morning, and our original plan was to visit Endert's Beach in the afternoon. Because we had to go clear around to see any of the sights in Jedidiah Smith Redwood State Park anyway, we decided to flip our schedule around and start at Endert's Beach so we could be there during a low tide. We hiked down from the parking lot to the beach. The tide was already starting to come back in and I was afraid that we had missed seeing all the cool things in the tide pools. But the farther we went along the shore and got into the rocks, the more things we saw. We saw lots of starfish and green anemones and found shells and such. It turned out to be really cool.
After exploring the tide pools, collecting treasures, and eating a lunch of crab pasta salad, we drove to the Stout Grove. We lucked out with parking and got the spot closest to the trailhead. We did the short loop around Stout Grove, then we considered moving the van closer to the Grove of the Titans and doing the short walk to that, but we realized that if we took off our socks and shoes and crossed the little creek that fed into the Smith River, we could link into the trail there. In fact, that is how the trail is marked out on the map, so we were just following the trail. We hiked about two miles to the Grove of Titans. They were very impressive. We considered hiking back the way we came, but we had walked a long way and Miriam's feet were sore. So instead we continued walking out on that trail to the Grove of Titans trailhead. The three girls waited on a log near the restroom there while Seth and I walked back on the road about a mile and a half to get to our car and then drive back and pick up the girls.
That night we drove back to Crescent City where we stopped to get dinner. Seth and Winnie went to a barbecue place and the other three of us got food from a rice and chicken kind of place. We thought we would sit on the picnic table outside at the chicken place to eat our dinner, but it got too cold so we just sat in the car and our food.
Then we made a quick stop at the Crescent City Walmart to pick up a couple of groceries: a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs, the pasta I forgot to pack and some strawberries. We went back to the cabin and gathered up all of our dirty laundry to start a couple of batches at the coin-op laundromat in the RV park where we were staying. Winnie's pants especially needed to be washed because she has gotten them so totally saturated with ocean water when we were at Endert's Beach and then she crawled in a few downed redwoods at Stout Grove and got her pants very muddy. These are the parents cargo sweatpants that she had purchased after picking them out online, so we wanted to get them as clean as possible. Luckily, there was some spray and wash pretreatment in the laundry room. After I got the clothing started, I realized that I did not have enough quarters to dry them. The office was closed, so I couldn't get quarters there. We saw that the nearby food mart and gas station would be closing in about 20 minutes, so we jumped in the car and drove there to politely ask if they could make change. The cashier was extremely nice and knew exactly what we were doing. She said that every year they have people come in asking for change to do their laundry. She says that they really ought to get a change machine in that laundromat, but she was more than happy to oblige.
We ran back to the RV park and watched an episode of One Piece, pausing periodically to check on our laundry, switch it over, and bring it back so we could fold it as we watch some more TV. Then we went to bed.
Ana working on a haiku at the Hiouchi Visitors' Center.
The girls checking out a sample of redwood that shows the rings and how old the tree was.
Ana and Miriam reacting to the signs that show that parts of Return of the Jedi and Bird Box were filmed in the redwoods here.
Seth with his finished haiku.,
Ana with hers.
Headed down to Smith River to see if we can cross. We could not.
Seth putting his boots back on after deciding we wouldn't try crossing the river.
Winnie, Miriam and Ana getting ready to head back to the van and drive around.
Winnie at Endert's Beach.
Andrea at Endert's Beach.
Winnie with at least part of a jellyfish at Endert's Beach.
Running away from the waves as the tide comes back in.
Green anemones on the rocks at Endert's Beach.
A hermit crab on the beach.
One of the many starfish we saw.
Patterns of the tide coming in on the sand.
Rock hopping while looking for life in the tidepools.
Family selfie at the beach.
Ana on top of the rock arch.
Seth and Andrea in front of the rock arch.
Miriam with the beach in the background.
Hiking back from the beach.
Flowers
We learned that this plant is called trillium.
Family picture in Stout Grove.
We all took on different stereotypical personalities: Ana was preppy, Andrea was nerdy, Winnie was cool, Miriam was emo, Seth was hardcore.
Andrea and Seth among the redwoods.
The girls being cool in the redwoods.
Hiking along the trail.
We thought these were giant clover, but we later learned that they are sorrel.
Holding hands around a redwood.
Miriam indicating what we think about people vandalizing in the redwoods.
Sun shining through a mossy branch. on the trail.
Ferns growing from a fallen tree.
Seth with the tall trees.
Winnie spanning the gap between two redwoods.
Those are some big trees.
Winnie next to a fallen redwood.
And inside a hollowed out redwood.
More big trees.
Looking at a standing hollowed out redwood.
Ana with the banana slug she found.
On the trail between Stout Grove and Grove of Titans.
Posing in the forest.
Seth and Andrea at the redwoods.
Checking out the width of the downed trees.
Inside a tree.
More photographic evidence of us in the redwoods.
On the boardwalk at Grove of Titans.
Winnie pretending to hold up a tree on the trail.
Back at the cabin chilling.
Tuesday, March 24
We woke up about 7:30, had some cereal for breakfast, and packed our bags for the day. We had counseled together the day before and decided to switch up our itinerary a little bit this morning. The girls had enjoyed the tide pools so much that we decided to forgo the Damnation Creek Trail hike that I had thought we would go on. It would have been the hardest hike of the whole trip. It's the steepest and tied for the longest of the hikes that I had planned, and with all of our steps yesterday (Seth and I both ended up with more than 30,000), we decided to take a little easier to stay.
Winnie had seen an aquarium in Crescent City and really wanted to go to that, so we went there first thing when they opened. This aquarium is different from others who've been to in that it's a guided tour. They had a tide pool petting area, a shark petting area, several different environments to observe, and a sea lion and seal demonstration at the end. For it being such a little aquarium, it was a really good experience for everyone. We were all very impressed with how well trained the seals and sea lions were and loved watching the employee feed the animals that she instructed them to do various tricks.
The girls all got some souvenirs at the aquarium. Ana got a redwoods postcard in the style of Vincent van Gogh. Winnie bought an enormous stuffed harbor seal plushie named Wyatt after the traumatized harbor seal we saw in the show. Miriam got a redwoods pocket watch which she was amazed to find.
After the aquarium, we drove to a different part of the beach in Crescent City than we had been to the day before. There were stairs that let down to the beach. We purposely timed it so that we would be there during low tide. We didn't see as many starfish or anemones this time, but we did still see some of each and a bunch of hermit crabs. This time at the beach we spent more time walking along the sand looking for rocks and stuff. Miriam became a random little boy's best friend when he started talking to her and they shared some discoveries together. Winnie managed to get herself completely drenched, and since we had to drive past our RV park anyway to get to the other places we were going that day, we decided to take a break at our cabin after our beach experience. Winnie was able to take a shower and change to dry clothes, and all of us ate lunch together. We had crackers, ham and cheese with assorted raw vegetables.
After lunch we drove to Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek State Park. We knew that this would be a little hike with a bunch of water crossings, but we didn't realize that we would basically be hiking up the canyon through a little creek. Unfortunately, I had not done a good job of informing everyone of our plans. The rest of us all had shoes that we could walk around in the water with, but Seth did not. We all switched to our sandals or Crocs, but Seth was in his sneakers the whole time. We helped him as much as we could by giving him the hiking stick to balance as he walked across the creek multiple times on logs or rock hopping, but he's still ended up with somewhat wet feet. Fern Canyon itself was amazing. Parts of Jurassic Park 2 were filmed there. There are 40-foot steep walls of the canyon just covered in ferns. We did the loop all the way back into the canyon and then climbed up to view up from above. Then we spent some time sitting on a log and putting our feet in the creek before turning around and coming back out. Fern Canyon is an extremely popular destination, so we were lucky to get a parking spot in the parking lot there.
From there we drove to Big Tree in Prairie Creek State Park. Originally I had planned for us to do a 3-ish mile hike that was part of a big loop that would take us to Big Tree, but the girls wanted a more low-key day so instead we parked right next to Big Tree and did a half mile circle loop in that part of the forest. You would think after doing some hikes in the redwoods that all the trails would start to look the same, but there were new sights and smells and sounds on this hike that we hadn't experienced before, so I was glad that we were able to do it.
After that, we came back to the cabin. Rebekah and Nathan in Delaware had asked if we wanted to play some Jackbox games with them this evening. They were on the East Coast and we were on the West Coast, so the time difference was even bigger than usual. We started playing as soon as we got back around 5 p.m. or so. We played three games and then let them go so that we could fix and eat dinner and they could get to bed because it is also their spring break and they were headed to Washington D.C. to go to a few museums the next day. Then we prepared and ate some spaghetti and green beans and cleaned up. We watched the rest of our episode of One Piece. We drew straws to see who would pick what we did afterward, and Winnie won. Ana had highly suggested we watch Bugonia, so when he decided we would do that. We watched about half of it that night, and Miriam decided that movie was not for her.
Miriam doing a very convincing job of riding a surfboard outside the aquarium.
Winnie holding a starfish at the aquarium.
Winnie and Miriam a the tidepool petting station.
Watching the seals and sealions through the windows.
Watching the seals and sea lions from the observation decks outside.
Seth watching the seal and sea lion demonstrations.
Hiking along the beach during low tide.
Some little crabs.
Winnie with a starfish.
Ana with a smaller starfish.
Walking along the sandier places of the beach. Miriam's little buddy is the kid in the blue.
Miriam in the "quicksand" and Winnie on top of it.Seth with a crab.
Miriam with a tiny starfish.
A recently showered Winnie eating lunch at the cabin.
Family selfie at Fern Canyon.
Checking out the walls of the canyon.
Winnie drinking from the water falling in the canyon.
Hiking along the bottom of the canyon.
The girls enjoying the creek at Fern Canyon.
Looking at the sights at Big Tree.
Three girls ruining Seth's selfie.
Being silly.
Walking along the trail at Big Tree.
Seth climbing up a fallen tree.
And jumping off.
Playing Jackbox back at the cabin with Rebekah and Nathan in Delaware.
Wednesday, March 25
After a breakfast of eggs and leftover breakfast items from previous days, we drove to the Tall Trees trailhead. This is a high-demand hike, so you have to get a permit in order to go on it. I had done that while planning the trip, so 24 hours before our day to hike it, I received the code for the locked gate so we could get to the trailhead. We drove all the way to the trailhead through the rain and donned ponchos and jackets, but we ended up taking them off not too far along the trail. As it turns out, not a lot of rain reaches the floor of a redwood forest. And even when we were out in the open, the rain at that point was more of just a falling mist.
I had downloaded the National Park service app, so we had a self-guided tour on the trail. There were numbers posted along the way, and at each number we would stop and read the next section of the tour. We learned a lot about the flora and fauna and history of the forest. It was quite fascinating.
This was our longest hike. It was about four and a half miles when all was said and done. The hike goes downhill until you reach the floor of the forest and follow a loop around until going back up. We also took a little side trail so that we could see Redwood Creek. Even though it was uphill on the way out, we hiked out faster than we hiked in because we weren't stopping as often to read our tour notes. Throughout the hike, we saw several banana slugs. Ana was deemed "Our Lady of the Slugs" because she found six. Miriam was nicknamed "Slughorn: for finding one slug. Winnie was nicknamed "Lil Slugger" for finding two slugs. Ana also found a tiny little frog. I didn't find anything because I was in the back of the line and apparently I'm really bad at looking for slugs.
When we got back to the trailhead, we pulled out our lunch. We had brought some Caesar salad kits and cartons of grilled chicken breast. We emptied all the different ingredients into the bag and just shook it up really good. It made for a really good lunch. Then we drove to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. There was another self-guided tour for this one. The whole loop had very little elevation gain and was only a mile and a half, so it was a delightful little walk through the woods. Seth found a very large snail that he was very excited about.
After that hike, we decided that we had walked around and seen enough trees, so we decided to forgo the Trillium Falls hike. Instead, we drove out to the Kuechel Visitors Center. We did a little bit more souvenir shopping there. Seth got an elk pin and then bought another one for his dad. Ana got a banana slug pin since she is in the banana slug champion.
After the visitors center, we drove out to the Klamath River Overlook because I had read in the visitor center that sometimes you can see sea lions on the rocks there. We parked and looked out at the beach and even used Seth's binoculars to try and find sea lions, but there weren't any. There was a trail that led out to an overlook accessible only by foot, and we all started down the trail. It proved steep and too narrow and scary for Miriam's likes, so Miriam and Seth turned around and went back to the parking lot. Ana, Winnie and I continued all the way down to the overlook. It was very pretty, but that meant we had a very steep climb back up to the parking lot afterward. While we were hiking, Seth and Miriam saw a group of people from Japan who asked them to take a picture. One of the girls was dressed up as some anime character, so they had a conversation with her about their shared interest in anime. Then Seth asked if they could get a picture with her. It was the most unlikely photo op of our entire trip.
After that, we went back to our cabin after gassing up and paying $5.40 a gallon. We had dinner of leftovers and then Seth and Miriam watched Fullmetal Alchemist while Winnie, Anna and I finished watching Bugonia. It's a very heavy movie, and I don't know if it was wise to have our 13-year-old watch it. Hindsight is 20/20. Then we played some Jackbox games together as a family. We also saw a group of maybe five sea lions in the river right outside our cabin. Seeing sea lions in the river outside our cabin bookended our stay there, which basically was magical.
We spent our last night in our Klamath cabin.
Seth unlocking the gate to our exclusive hike.
Walking down the trail to Tall Trees.
One banana slug.
They're gigantic!
And sticky.
Posing in front of a tree that didn't get completely removed from the trail.
Looking through the tree hole.
Ana's tiny frog.
Ana and Winnie checking out the frog.
Hiking along the forest floor.
Andrea and Seth at Redwood Creek.
Looking up at the trees.
Ana shaking up our lunch.
Seth, Andrea and Miriam during lunch.
Ana and Winnie during lunch.
A picture that got sent to us while we were in the redwoods over spring break. Rebekah and Nathan were in Washington, D.C. crossing the street when they heard, "Rebekah?!" It was the McGarrys (a family in our ward) who were also spending their spring break in D.C. What are the chances?!
Winnie giving Andrea a piggyback.
Seth's snail.
On the bridge near the trailhead for Lady Bird Johnson Grove.
Winnie seeing how her wing span compares to that of a condor at the visitors center.
A little Easter egg in the visitors center.
Zoomed out so you can see how well hidden it was.
Near the beach at the visitors center.
Hiking down to the overlook.
At the overlook. No sea lions to be seen.
Overlook picture.
Meanwhile, Seth and Miriam getting their picture with this character.
Thursday, March 26
We woke up, ate breakfast, stripped our beds, threw the towels in the shower and took all the garbage to the dumpster. We loaded up the coolers, bins, duffel bags and us into the van and left the RV park shortly before 9:00. We did stop in crescent City for just a couple more groceries. Then we alternated taking turns driving to Burns, Oregon. We ate lunch in the car and dinner at a cool little taco truck in Burns. It's only open two or three days a week, so we were lucky to be there on a day it was operating.
We spent another night in the "sketchy" motel.
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