We started our day traveling to Prairie Creek State Park, with the goal of driving the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway and doing a hike along Prairie Creek. The parkway was beautiful and there was a lot of trailheads off of this road. One of the trails was the Prairie Creek-Foothill Trail (now called the Karl Knapp-Foothill Trail), which took us past the Big Tree and along Prairie Creek. As all of our hikes had turned out to be, this one was also very peaceful. We enjoyed the stillness of the forest with the burbling of Prairie Creek. This was also an area that’s known for banana slugs, but we didn’t see any (or maybe weren’t looking hard enough). The Big Tree lived up to its name – this 1500 year old tree is a whopping 286 feet tall and has a diameter of 23.7 feet! It was impossible to capture in one picture, but we tried by using a vertical panorama setting and using Mike for scale!

Later in the day, we decided to go to Crescent City to watch the sunset. It didn’t disappoint and we also got the pleasure of watching and listening to the sea lions as the sun set. After the sunset, we stopped at a vista point on our way back to the hotel and had a great view of dusk over Crescent City!

Prairie Creek-Foothill Trail:

Crescent City: