Klamath Overlook / Prairie Creek Redwoods

Crescent City to Trinidad, California | Klamath Overlook | Hiking in the Prairie Creek Redwoods | December 2025

We began our day with packing up and moving on from our campsite near Crescent City, running a couple of errands in town, and then continuing our drive South on US-101. We were now getting into entirely new territory for both of us — the biggest gap in our county map, including all of Northern and central California and Western Nevada. Honestly, it was overwhelming how much lay before us, how unfamiliar it all was, and all the decisions that would have to be made in the coming weeks. How long should we stay on the coast? The thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to see Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks, but there was still the big question of which way should we take to get there? We both also wanted to visit San Francisco, but we were starting to lean toward not going there in the van, and saving that for another trip entirely.

Fortunately, there were a few things that would be our limiting factors: first was weather – while California is known for temperate weather year-round, knowing that we wanted to avoid snow and cold meant we wouldn’t be visiting higher elevations (besides the aforementioned national parks). We’re also limited by only having 2 wheel drive on the van, and needing to be within cell signal, at least during the weekdays. I am choosing to be thankful for all these limitations, because if we were truly limitless, I have no idea how we’d make decisions!

We knew next to nothing about this Northwest part of Northern California — I had never seen or heard of the hiking opportunities in the many national forests between us and the valley, I just knew that we had the ocean on our right, mountains further out on our left, and Redwoods surrounding us. And so for the next couple of days, we decided to stick to what we were growing more familiar with: the Redwoods and the coast.

For today, we planned to take it easy and only go as far as Klamath, CA. We ended up spending much of today at the Klamath River Overlook, a scenic vista on the coast, two miles off the highway and just North of the Klamath River. We sat at a picnic table, working and picnicking, then set out on a short hike heading North on the California Coastal Trail. We didn’t end up walking to anywhere in particular, just went in search of a good view to the North and an easy way to get some exercise. That evening, we drove to the South side of the Klamath River to camp. We enjoyed a gorgeous sunset from this spot, and a quiet night next to the ocean.

The next morning, we started the day with Curtis searching for a letterbox, and learning about a flood that tragically took out the town of Klamath. We then continued heading South, hoping to spend the day exploring the Prairie Creek district of the Redwoods. Our plan was slightly thwarted when we came to the North entrance of the scenic byway through the park and found that the majority of the road was closed that week. Determined to stick to our plan, we instead drove 101 down to the South entrance, where the road was open only one mile to the visitor center. When we arrived, we found the visitor center was also closed for the day, but luckily we were still able to hike on the trails — we’d just have to walk further to reach them.

While it was unfortunate that we had to miss so much of this park, the closures sort of worked in our favor, because it meant that we were all alone for most of our walk through the woods. We walked out to what was marked as the ‘Big Tree’, only to learn that it wasn’t called that because it was the tallest or widest, but simply because travelers in the early 1900s used to call it the Big Tree. We learned that the trail that we were walking used to be a road that visitors would take to see the trees. We walked the Foothill Trail to the Big Tree, then walked the Cathedral Trees trail back to the visitor center. Along the way, we finally spotted our first banana slug of the trip!

After we returned from our walk, we drove a little further South to the Elk Meadow picnic area. After having lunch in the sunshine, we set out on another hike, this time a 3 mile loop to see Trillium Falls and more old growth groves. We took our time and lingered on the bridge over the small cascading falls, and sat on different benches staring up at the trees.

When we were finished here, we drove down further South to the Thomas H. Kuchel Visitor Center, which sits right on the beach. After touring the visitor center and watching the short film, we went out for a walk, and to enjoy the rest of the daylight by the water. Our plan for that evening was to sleep at a rest stop just North of Trinidad, so we stayed here until after sunset to minimize our time parked there.