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.

thin tall trees — Redwoods up the hill from the trail. Just little ones at first, bit they get big quick.

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.

Columbian windflower (Anemonastrum deltoideum) perhaps — Just one new flower.

trail in the green — This trail is supposed to be accessible. There are a number of gravel trails that are meant to be, bit there is a narrow spot just short of the junction that might be hard.

mushroom like a table — The massive mushrooms are what is out now.

close up of skunk cabbage flower — The skunk cabbage is still blooming. There were some particularly large plants in the tiny streams.

young deer — The deer, including this faun, where on the same side of the meadow as I, so where easier to photograph than the elk. There would be better elk chances

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.

The roots across the trail look like significant tripping hazards. Light floods the creek area beside.

snail that is not typically found in the gardens of the world — The sideband is quite a beautiful snail. (I suspect this one to be the common Pacific sideband, but at least one suggests the rarer redwood sideband.)

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.

wild ginger with an old bloom — The taller leaves go with and hide the twisting, weird flower of wild ginger.

small flowers on a long stem with hairy leaves in pairs — A little modesty flower perhaps. Lots of little flowers scattered in the woods.

trail with a little trillium — There's still a few trillium, mostly turning red and purple, and redwood sorrel lining the trail.

ferns and trees — The trail winds through the forest with many levels.

longhorn beetles on a trillium — How one gets more longhorn beetles.

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.

looking up a tree — The trail passes through the middle of a couple trees, too. This isn't part that looks like old road.

buds waiting to open — New flowers I'll still have to wait to see. I never found one of these more open than this.

lots of critters with two legs per segment — I saw a few of these millipedes singly before spotting this mess of them below the redwood sorrel.

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.

up into the tree tops — Forever upward are the redwoods.

rhododendron leaves — The leaves look right for a rhododendron, but it certainly isn't looking to bloom now.

two trillium, one with stripes — Lots of trillium in various states of turning colors like this one developing stripes.

camellia leaves — Checking out the new growth of something that looks a bit like a camellia. Apparently camellias are only in gardens here.

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.

flowing water — There are a few creeks along the way.

redwood sorrel with particularly large leaves — The redwood sorrel is still blooming.

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.

insect with a beetle to eat — I found a hunter in the undergrowth.

bright yellow slug — The banana slugs were trying to bunch up and be smaller as the day warmed.

dark purple trillium with a light purple trillium — I saw some of the darkest purple trillium I have seen. There was also some approaching brick red as can be found along Smith River.

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.

Lots of nice trail along the way, but finding moss covered trail was a bit surprising.

mushrooms on a log — A variety of growth and rot.

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.

wild ginger in bloom — A little bit of the patch of wild ginger.

ginger flowers below the leaves — More flowers hiding under the leaves.

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.

rhododendron with no flowers — Another rhododendron without any flowers.

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.

purple along the sides — Still trillium to be seen. It is quite a good moment to take in the trillium in all its variations even if I didn't have any rhododendron.

reflection on the creek — Ferns hanging out over Prairie Creek.

little flowers — Tiny flowers beside the trail. These got my attention because there's many with a single leaf plants with the shape of the wild ginger leaves but with this very different vein pattern. These with multiple leaves were the only ones with flowers.

bridge with a hole — There's a few bridges over the creek, some are looking mildly dangerous.

seasonal bridge is out — More difficult is that the one seasonal bridge (not marked on the map) still hasn't been put back up. The creek is very shallow and some small rocks make the crossing possible without taking off shoes.

flowers on a tree — The live trees produce gardens as well.

leaves of western lily of the valley and wild ginger — Lots and lots of leaves. More wild ginger above the log and the western lily of the valley (the white flowers three photos above) below.

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.

redwood with a twist — The "corkscrew tree" seems to have broken and continued growing with a twist.

a fairly large redwood — The "big tree" gets its stats on a sign, a protective boardwalk for its roots, sighting tubes for features, and some making fun of the idea that this tree is more special than any of the others. One sign points out the dangers trees that get named face by over-visitation.

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.

salmonberry — Some salmonberries were ripening already.

roots going horrizontally through a cut tree — It is interesting to see how the roots of a tree growing over a stump or log will go.

most of the elk — Elk just the other side of the "danger wild elk" signs in Elk Prairie. Probably Roosevelt elk, the subspecies of elk that live in the region.

back to the trail I started at — The trail through the meadow is not available at the moment.

Comments

Margaret said…

Your father took lots of pics of bellly flowers on a trip to Baffin Island. Wonder if he has them still. I doubt if they have been identified.
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.

10 May, 2020 04:14