Day 8

Many of the beaches along the coast have a long, shallow tidal area. Harris Beach is one of them. Low tide was about 10:00 am. We took the Rock Beach trail( I'm pretty sure, near the place to watch the sunset) down to the beach. It is kinda steep in parts and is in need of some repair. The best thing we saw in the tidepools were sea stars. We searched for open anemones but found few. After wandering on the left side of the beach, we crossed in front of some rocks and onto the part of the beach easily accessible by driving down to the parking lot or walking on a trail from the campground. There were amazing rocks with lots of sea stars. Much more bang for the effort on this side. 

There was a lady harvesting mussels, some the size of my hand. A fishing license allows you to harvest 72 mussels. She looked like she had done this before and was quickly reaching her quota.

We moved 20 miles down the road to the KOA Crescent City. The site is OK. Jim and Ardith had a great site in the middle of the woods. I think one's experience of the campground has a lot to do with the spot you got.

After we got settled into the campsite, we headed to Stout Memorial Grove in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. Howland Hill Road which leads to the trailhead is windy, narrow, and mostly unpaved. I was happy Jim likes to drive the truck and I didn't have to worry about the SUV.

Stout Grove has beautiful 300-foot old-growth redwoods. The trail is about a half mile one way and leads to the edge of the Smith River. There were families enjoying the water. It looked like a great place to hang out.






Further down the road is the Grove of the Titans. The grove is just off another trail so when a book
came out that talked about how beautiful the grove is, many hikers began beating a trail to visit them. This caused the Redwood Conservancy to build a trail and to create a sort of boardwalk to protect the trees and the shallow root system. In 2021 the park opened the Grove of Titans walkway. To prevent soil compression and allow rainfall to reach the soil, the trail was elevated slightly on a 6-foot wide metal mesh walkway. There are a lot of steps but very easy for us to climb.



We met back up with Jim and Ardith. By now it was time for dinner. We had decided that today was the day we'd try a local brewery. By the time we got there, there was about an hour's wait at SeaQuake Brewing. Since we couldn't really find any good options, we decided to hang out. Luckily, you could order beer while we were waiting. We had a patio table with a heater. Jim and Ardith's dog could join us. We ordered SeaQuake nachos for the table and Denis and I shared locally caught cod fish and chips - which was sufficient.





Location: Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, Crescent City, CA 95531, USA

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