Rhododendron Trail
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
The general expectation is that the rhododendrons should be blooming throughout April and May. I've seen them blooming in planted areas beside the forest and along the freeway on the way up, but still haven't seen any actually in the forest. Being halfway through that blooming time seems long past time to change that. I checked to be sure the state parks in Humboldt County are still only in a soft closure allowing people to walk on. It adds about three miles to a longer loop to hike in from outside the park, but flowers! Bright red flowers! Seeing Humboldt Lagoons State Park blocking off parking next to the park as well as in the park was worrisome, but Prairie Creek Redwoods happily left a little at the edge of which no one was taking advantage. It was mine and being next to the Elk Prairie Trail, I decided to walk along it to the Rhododendron Trail. First I watched a couple of the elk on the far side of the meadow.
The trail is split off from the meadow with shrubberies that grow at the edge of the forest. There were new flowers and old ones that I saw when in the area at the beginning of March. There seemed to be even more leaf shapes ready to sprout forth with their own new flowers. I forgot my poles, but it just made it easier to get close to the flowers to not have to bother with them.
At the junction, signs mark the accessible trails, but not the continuation of the Cathedral Trees Trail. It certainly is not accessible with quite a few roots stretching across it. It follows along the side of Boyes Creek for a while, but soon little can be seen of the water.
Not too far is the next junction and the start of the Rhododendron Trail. It is well marked including mileage to some nearer destinations. I expected to see some before getting to the trail, but the fact that it seems to climb the highest suggested to me that the rhododendrons might like it higher. It is smaller than the shorter trail, but still very well established and maintained. I soon found the local variety of wild ginger which I wanted to do since seeing it on one of the signs on the last visit. The picture of the flower is like a long, twisty mustache of the villain in an old film, but in three. I started flipping over leaves and nearly jumped out of my skin when I actually found one of them. The aged flower looked like some sort of creature, possibly dead. I added a hope to find one that wasn't quite so old as I climbed to higher elevations. I continued on with great expectations.
The trail drops out onto old road that is still open in summer. There is only the sign marking the trail, but I was pretty sure the trail would be up the hill, so I turned and climbed the road to the end. I could see old road continuing toward the freeway past a barricade. The trail is signed again at the end and seemed to also continue along on an old road, although it is harder to see the old road bed.
I climbed up onto the seat of a chest high log beside the trail to have lunch and ponder that I was about as high as the trail gets and still hadn't seen any rhododendrons in bright red or pink plumage. I wasn't even sure if I'd seen anything with the right leaves. They're not exactly a familiar thing to me. I looked carefully about me and found a pair of likely looking specimens showing just old remains of seed pods and maybe just the start of something more for this year. Further on, I found another plant that looked more like a camellia that was also barely into budding.
I started to despair that I wouldn't actually get to see any showy wild flowers. I was generally looking at the smaller flowers closer to the trail and it is annoying that the attention seems to either settle on the near, middle, or far and misses the other distances. I could miss rhododendron by looking too much at all the other things. Then again, being red they should draw the eye easily. I stopped now and then along the trail to really look all around me, but still couldn't find any.
I halfway expected to see trail closed signs when I got to the junction with South Fork Trail. It was posted online that this section of trail was closed before, but I couldn't find it again. I hoped it was open, but I found a broken bridge, which wasn't much of an obstacle, and a downed tree, which took a bit more effort than usual to pass. It didn't look like any recent work had been done anywhere but also like many people before me had passed the two bad spots.
There wasn't a trail closed sign when I got to Brown Creek Trail either. It looked like a much larger tree had come down on the trail and partly taken out the sign, but that had been removed. I figured I still had the time to take the last bit of trail before circling back, so went for it. I still hadn't seen any big red blooms.
Just before the last junction, I found some more ginger. The patch was bigger and the flowers more obvious and all looking fresh. There's even more flowers hiding down under the leaves. So that's one find.
There's another trail that climbs up, out and back, but I just turned to go down at the junction. I finished off the Rhododendron Trail without seeing a single bloom.
There's fancy signs at the trailhead. The one for the Rhododendron Trail says that at nine miles, it is the longest trail in the park. It has a map and recommendations for loops to hike with mileages. Across the road, there is the same thing with other loop recommendations for Prairie Creek Trail along with a second sign with hints about animals that live in the forest including a salamander that remains in the tops of the redwoods most its life. I headed past it and turned left on the Prairie Creek Trail to return.
I'm pretty sure I was passing more rhododendrons, but none were looking like blooming. Was the dry winter that bad for them? These have creeks flowing by. There is lots of water for them. I had passed a few trails back to the road and climbing the ridge and skipped them all. I came to one beside a tree named on the map and wandered down a little to see what it might be before continuing along the trail to follow the signs for another named tree.
I continued on by what seemed the most direct route back to the car. I took the trail toward the junction where the road was blocked off and then followed along the side of the road back to my parking spot. There were now two cars and I'd actually run into a pair of people along the creek. The elk were a bit more numerous in Elk Prairie and were hanging out disturbingly close to my car.
©2020 Valerie Norton
Written 9 May 2020
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Comments
He did take flower pics on lots of other hikes. This stands out in that others commented about view of him when passing fellow hiker.