Down the Coast II: Damnation Never Looked So Good

I mean, look at that tree! You can hardly even see Emily next to it! Amazing stuff.

This leg of the trip started out in Crescent City, which is somewhere in between a working fishing town and a tourist spot (sort of like Newport, actually... pretty cool...). That mix is nicely captured by the Curly Redwood Lodge: it clearly caters to tourists, but it's pretty handsomely low-key. And affordable!

And here's a nice looking salon:


Crescent City is also where you'll find the Crescent City Information Center, the main visitor center for Redwood National and State Parks. We stopped there on our way out of town, got some great advice from a ranger, and headed down to Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park looking for the Damnation Creek Trail.

Great hike. Best of the trip, I'd say. (Name's not bad either!)

Begins around 1,000 feet elevation, in redwoods like the one at the top of this post, and then makes its way through probably four different ecosystems, ending with tide pools on the beach. Highly recommended hike.

Here's a map, in case you're interested:

Plus, if you get on the trail at 8am (so that you can be on the beach for low tide), you should basically have the place to yourself.



That tree stands next to this bridge:


And right across the bridge, after walking in various forests for a couple of miles, we got to this view:


Trail behind us:


Damnation Cove:




After the hike (did I mention that it was great?), we continued down the coast:

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Made a brief stop in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park:


Our final destination was the Elk Cove Inn. It sounded like a great place when we were making our reservations, but when we hit the first bit of Highway 1 we started to doubt our planning:

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Twenty miles in about an hour! Sheesh! At least it's kind of pretty once you get back to the coast :)

And then we arrived, found out we got an upgrade, saw the beautiful view of Elk Cove, and were greeted by this great surprise in our room:

So glad we made it down there! My only regret might be that we didn't stay another night!



After a nice sunset and a good night's sleep, we got to enjoy more beach and tide pool fun at Elk Cove.






Video panorama of the cove:


Can't see the Inn too well, but it's up on the hill behind Emily:

Hope to make it back there soon!

Okay, that seems like plenty for one post. Thanks for reading, and cheers!