Avenue of the Giants

The Coast Redwoods of northern California are world’s tallest trees. The current record holder, Hyperion, towers more than 115 metres and one of dozens that exceed 100 metres in height.  Coast Redwoods grow in a narrow strip of land on the Pacific west coast covering an area approximately 750km in length that stretches inland between 8 and 75kms.

The largest and tallest surviving population of trees can be found in Humboldt County in Northern California.  Most are now protected within the Humboldt Redwoods State Park.  Within the park a former Route 101 highway provides visitors with ready access to many of its tallest trees.  A four-lane freeway by-pass, opened in 1960, saw this wonderfully scenic route aptly renamed the Avenue of the Giants.  Its 51km length takes motorist through one towering groves of trees after another.  In places the road narrows and weaves to accommodate the trunks of mature trees along its verge.

Garry and I spent a weekend exploring the area earlier this month while on a business trip to San Francisco.  We based ourselves at the Benbow Historic Inn situated on a picturesque bend of the South Fork Eel River. We stayed in one of the Inn’s original rooms that included an expansive private balcony overlooking the hotel’s landscaped grounds, an old stone arch bridge and the river’s crystal clear waters.

The Redwood groves are truly magical.  Nothing can prepare you for the majesty of these unique trees or the wonderfully serene and relatively open forest that surrounds them.  Highlights of our visit included the Founder’s Grove where the 112 metre long Dyerville Giant rests after falling in 1991. Nearby the Founder’s Tree still stands at almost 100 metres.  We also did the inevitable tourist thing and drove our car through the impressive Shrine Drive-Thru Tree near Myers Flats.

However, the most impressive grove we visited would have to have been the Tall Trees Grove on Mattole Road, a side road that winds for miles through the State Park’s densest concentration of mature trees.  The Tall Tree Grove was filled with dozens of mature fallen trees that were simply breath-taking in size and scope.  The grove is also home to the Giant Tree whose girth exceeds a staggering 16 metres in circumference. (Oh yes – it’s also the world’s 18^th tallest tree.