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The trouble with trilliums

Jedediah Smith Redwoods

Trillions of trilliums

This time of year the state and national parks in and around Crescent City are blooming with wildflowers. If you want to see trilliums, rhodendrums, azaleas, and many more flowers in their colorful glory get yourself to Northern California now. And do not forget the ever present giant redwoods and magnificent beaches?

Okay sometimes travel requires sacrifice; Crescent City is a six hour drive from Oakland. However, the trip there will take you though some of the most beautiful forests, scenery, and rugged coastlines in the world; so even the drive has its benefits.

Magnificent rhodendrums

If you like serous hiking through old growth forest filled with flowering trilliums then Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park's Boy Scout trail is for you. This park is a small remaining patch of what lots of Northern California must have looked like, pre-Gold Rush days, when Jedediah Smith came through to trap fur in the 1820s. The redwood forests used to be much bigger then. Today only four percent remains of the original forest. The Parks Service owns three percent and logging companies own the other one percent, which they still log today. The destruction of all these trees, by our greedy logging, occurred in just 200 years. Before this shameful endeavor they had survived for millennia.

Everywhere rhodendrums and azaleas

It is difficult to describe the absolute beauty of a redwood grove. It feels like being in a cathedral or an Egyptian temple. At the same time it is possible to imagine a pre-historic scene of dinosaurs wandering through the ferns and trees. And the trilliums are such an added bonus. They are a perennial herbaceous flowering plant, native to temperate regions of North America and Asia. They are so elusive to see in flower and they add such a depth of color to the forest; it is definitely something you must see before you depart this world.

Information

A place to stay while in Crescent City is the Lighthouse Inn, 681 highway 101 south. They have reasonable rates, friendly service, and clean rooms.


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