Stout Grove

Our trip to the area including Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park featured some vague notions in our minds that perhaps we’d find a drive-thru tree or some similar notion that comes to mind when one pictures the Redwoods. But once we arrived at our cabin along the south fork of the Smith River and had our first walk at Flat Camp, we realized “the Redwoods” is simply massive and we would experience only a tiny slice of it (not wanting to drive around all day every day of our vacation).

Those drive thru trees? Gimmicks from a bygone era. Who would carve up a tree like that these days? The closest one to where we were was in Klamath, about an hour’s drive from our cabin. While we had planned some beach time in Crescent City and a drive down the coast after that, we were just too tired to make that happen and preferred to return to the cabin.

It didn’t seem much to matter after we found Stout Grove [AllTrails]. This. Was. Epic! Don’t go for the hiking, unless you like walks of under a mile. Go for the jaw-dropping beauty featuring the trees that make this place so amazing.