Redwood National and State Parks- Prarie Creek State Park

There is a reason that the Fern Canyon Trail is hard to do- you have to have a pass that can be hard to get on weekends and holidays. You can either book the pass in advance or try for one of the passes that are given out at 9 am the day before. We tried for several days to get our passes and finally grabbed some on our last available day.

The road down to the trail is a narrow, curvy, dusty, gravel road. Be sure to take it slow and move over for oncoming vehicles. The parking lot was able to easily handle the cars that had passes and there is a restroom at the trailhead.  Fern Canyon has been featured in several movies including the second Jurassic Park movie. The trail can either be a loop or you can do it as an out and back trail. The first half of the trail is through canyon, walking along the creek bed, and although there are plenty of planks and rocks, we still managed to get our shoes a little wet in the creek. My All Trails App had the total hike at 1.2 miles however because of the back-and-forth across the creek and backtracking for pictures, we logged closer to 2 miles. We had a blast at Fern Canyon. It is extremely popular because it is such a super fun treck through the water and if you go simply out and back, there is very little elevation gain. We decided to hike the full loop trail, which takes you up and above the canyon.

Once we were done with the canyon hike, we walked from the same parking lot over to Gold Bluffs Beach. Here we sat and ate our lunches and watched the seals playing in the water just off shore. Again, it's easy to see why this area is so popular. We highly recommend adding this to your itinerary.