15.7. Redwoods - Tall Tree Grove

The highlight of all possible highlights in Redwood National Park is of course the Tall Tree Grove, which I (Klaus) still have very beautiful memories of when I first went there a few years (or decades..) ago. We could not believe it when we were told that the Tall Tree Grove access road was actually closed because of insufficient funding of the National Park.
There are two alternatives to go hike there, we were told. Both are 8 to 9 hours, or a bit over 26 km in length. Having survived the Sentier Mattel in the Verdon Canyon in France two years ago, we decided that the Redwood Creek Trail, as it is told, will not remain unhiked, either.
So of course I tried to get everyone up as soon as possible, and we actually managed to leave the campsite at 9:00. By the time we bought a map, drove the small distance from the campground to the trailhead (some 45 miles) and packed our backpacks, it was 10.45 ;-)
Anyhow, the trail started out beautifully, yet not really in redwood groves, but in beautiful old-growth forest with some redwoods in it, after all. It follows redwood creek for some 6 miles. Markus got enthusiastic at the 5 mile post because we were so close already and basically ran the rest of the trail, going up, passing the Bond creek and the 44 greek and then going down again. At the end, we crossed the redwood creek a second time and were in the Tall Tree Grove! Hard to believe, but we actually managed!

We enjoyed a wonderful picnic with almost everything we needed and solemnly walked the 1 mile Tall Tree Grove loop, gazing in awe at the enourmously majestic and impressive redwoods. We eventually had to say goodbye, knowing that the trail back was another 7,7 miles.

Up to the 6 miles post, everything was good. The distance from the 6 to the 5 mile post seemed endless. Motivation was decreasing. At the three mile post noone could believe it was still that far. Feet and legs hurt, it was getting a bit late. As usual, I kept promising the kids that the river crossing (marking the 1,6 mile post) was "just a little bit further", but Markus had unhappy memories of me promising things like that (remembering the "tunnels" in Sentier Mattel which took ages to appear). So once we got to the river crossing, noone could really walk any more, and the remaining 1,6 miles took us more like an hour, rather than the 20 minutes we had remembered... it was 7:30 pm by the time we got back!
Once we got to the car, we started heading south. We wanted to get some miles under the wheels to reach Yosemite (everyone was so excited about doing another hike at this point!). We passed through Eureka (checked out the downtown area) and pondered: Should we eat, continue driving until late and stay in a Motel, OR should we look for an RV site, eat a soup and sleep early. We decided to let faith decide: If there was an In ´N Out Burger in Eureka, plan A, otherwise plan B. The problem was that not only was there NO burger in Eureak, but there was also NO RV site for the next hour or so. We drove all the way back to the Avenue of the Giants, were we found an actually really nice RV site in redcrest, but of course it was totally dark by then. We had a quick soup, everyong showered in the camper (except for Markus, who was of course reading), and then played a round of "hike" (a card game). Then off to bed!!!