6/14/17 California, Redwood NP

Drove through Redwood National Park today. It's the worst park we've been to. 

Started off on Howland Hill Road recommended by the ranger. Although it had some sweet tall trees, the road was terrible. It was narrow and extremely crowded so you go a bit then have to pull over immediately for a car to pass. The worst part was the potholes. We've driven on a lot of unkept national forest roads but nothing compared to this. We were just ready to get off of it. But got a cool pic of tall trees. Had no idea that these were going to be the only tall trees we saw. 

Then we drove along the coast and stopped at the beaches. This was my favorite part of the park. The water was beautiful. 

So we wanted to do a hike called tall tree loop to what used to be the biggest tree in the world up until a few years ago when the top branch broke off. This was going to be our designated forest hike for the park. You have to get a permit from the rangers station and they give you an access code to the lock on the gate. They only let 50 cars a day in that area. So we got that all taken care of and drove down to the southern part of the park. There were plenty of hikes in the northern forests but we skipped them since we were planning on this part of the park. 

We get to the area and you have to drive 7 miles on this awful, steep road. I've never seen such bad roads. We drive way back in and get to the gate and find out we were given the wrong combination and the lock won't open. We had zero cell service. So we wasted a lot of gas and beat up our truck for no reason. Even stopped at the fire department in that area and they didn't have the combination. Don't know what they do if there's a fire in that area...

Needless to say it made us pretty annoyed. At that point we were way past all the other hikes and it was getting later in the day. So turns out our crappy drive in the beginning of the park was the only place we got to see the trees. The park is disorganized and not well kept at all. We were ready to move on. 

We did get to see some cool elk though. I got some pics on my good camera. Also got to see some sea lions on the way out. Again, the good pics are on the good camera. 

We drove east for the first time this trip. Drove into Six Rivers national forest and tucked back in the woods for the night.