Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park

Highway 36 runs 17 miles east from Highway 101 to reach this park, and the drive is the point. Grizzly Creek sits nearly 30 miles inland from the coast on the Van Duzen River, and State Parks pitches it as "a sublime redwood forest full of big trees and few people."

It's small. The 2019 brochure calls it a 393-acre park while the park page says only that it covers less than a square mile. Trail mileage lands around 4.5 to 5 miles depending on which State Parks page you read, and nothing here is rated strenuous — the longest listed route is the 1.25-mile Memorial Trail Loop.

That loop comes with a catch. Reaching its trailhead means crossing the Van Duzen on a footbridge State Parks installs for summer only, so from fall through spring the Memorial Trail is effectively off the map. The campground follows the same rhythm: 28 sites on one paved loop, Memorial Day to Labor Day, booked through ReserveCalifornia.

Cheatham Grove is the other reason to come, and it's four miles west of the visitor center — a separate stop off Highway 36, not a walk from camp. The loop through it is ADA accessible on compacted native soil, averaging 2 percent grade with paved trailhead parking, and runs either 0.6 or 0.7 miles depending on the State Parks page. Georgia-Pacific donated the grove in the 1980s. Owen R. Cheatham's lumber company preserved the redwoods that became the park, and California bought the land in 1943.

Where Grizzly Creek joins the Van Duzen, near the visitor center, is the swimming hole. Currents run strong and no lifeguards work here. This is bear country, so use the food lockers. Don't feed the jays and ravens either — they prey on the eggs and chicks of the endangered marbled murrelets nesting overhead.