Fern Canyon

Home Creek carved this canyon, and Home Creek is still what you walk in. There's no trail through Fern Canyon in the usual sense — you pick a line up the cobbled streambed between walls about fifty feet high, packed root-to-rim with five-finger, deer, lady, sword and chain ferns growing straight out of wet rock. California State Parks calls it a hanging garden. That's about right.

Getting there is most of the effort. Davison Road leaves Highway 101 three miles north of Orick and runs seven to eight miles of single-lane gravel to the coast, including two stream crossings you drive through roughly a mile and a half before the trailhead. Trailers are prohibited outright. Vehicles over 24 feet long or 8 feet wide can't come either. In early summer, high clearance is worth having rather than hoping.

From May 15 to September 15 you need a free vehicle reservation, and this is where most people get caught: it's booked through Redwood Parks Conservancy, not Recreation.gov. The reservation covers 9am to 5pm. A separate $12 vehicle fee is collected at the Gold Bluffs Beach kiosk, cash or check only — no cards, no ATM for miles. Outside that summer window nothing is reserved, but the narrow wooden footbridges come out around October, so you wade instead.

Roosevelt elk graze the flats near the canyon mouth year round. Keep a school-bus length between you and any of them. Approaching elk is against California state law, and cows with calves in late spring will make the point themselves.

Wear shoes you don't mind soaking.