Ten Taypo and Hope Creek Loop

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

(Map link.)

After returning to the Rhododendron Trail the previous week to see how the budding parasitic plants were getting on, but missing most of them, I prepared a little more to find them and returned. I noted the actual locations I found the plants, then for good measure checked out where everyone else had been finding monotropes (that is, subfamily Monotropoideae, which includes snowplant) around the park. I'm less interested in the wintergreens (genus Pyrola) or the other wintergreens (genus Chimaphila), but there were plenty of more interesting points left. They seemed to cluster around the Hope Creek Trail. That was a nice find. I'd rather not do the same trail three times in a month. I need variety! And since I've done Hope Creek in the past year, I elected to change the direction and loop counter-clockwise. It may delay the gratification, but will be a little different experience.

ferns and redwoods — Of course, there's a whole lot of redwoods big and small.

flowers and seeds — Details of the salal as it goes to seed.

pink flowers on a bush, big trees behind — The rhododendrons start up very quickly and are still blooming.

flowers falling off — They are on the downhill slope, past their prime, now.

As I've never geocached for plants, I thought a little about what to expect. In actual geocaching, someone makes a great effort to get the correct coordinates. In this, the coordinates are not so carefully obtained. Thinking about my own: I match up pictures to a track based on time. Hopefully, I have the correct offset to compensate for the inaccuracy of that set time. If not, the actual point will be shifted along the path somewhere. These show up on iNaturalist with no accuracy information and I had a few other points that were the same. They could easily be a couple hundred feet off. Other points claimed to be within a few meters of the actual place. I suspected these came from devices that could get a location directly. Also, that these would be underestimating how far off they might be. I have regularly watched a device jump around by 30 feet while claiming 12 foot accuracy. Then there's some claiming accuracy of a few kilometers. These were probably set manually by a user from memory and they may have been very sloppy about that range. All of this works against actually finding the plant, however there is one really important thing working for me. Everything that has been marked is probably visible from the trail.

super tall hanging orange flowers with rhododendrons in the background — Still loads of leopard lilies hanging, bright and happy, with plenty more coming.

I actually came to the first point before the intersection. This one was marked with accuracy of 158 meters and... I came up with nothing. This particular one would have been a species I hadn't seen, and I still haven't seen it. So not an auspicious start. I took the right at the junction. I was moving quite slowly, trying to examine all the nearby underbrush and remember to take in the majesty of the redwood trees.

looking up fire scarred redwood trees — These redwood trees.

fern covered hillside with trees — Some more redwood trees.

growing redwood tree — New redwood trees, barely bigger than the (very tall) rhododendrons, too.

leopard lily with rather orange anthers — And there are so very many lilies along the trail.

And then I came upon a hillside looking rather barren except for quite a lot of funny looking plants sticking up out of the dirt. They weren't anything I had marked in the GPS, not that it matters. What matters is what is actually there. No delayed gratification after all. Victory!

little strangeness popping up all over — A few of many California pinefoot.

tall stalk of white flowers with yellow centers — Some of the specimens were on the tall side for this plant.

fuzzy petals — There's the littlest bit of fuzz on the petals.

structure more visible here — More flowers just stretching out, looking for pollination.

I tried to interest a pair of kids in the odd little flowers, but they weren't having any of it. Then along came a group talking of keys and pointing out the fuzz and also there for those particular flowers. They left the other direction with hints that there would be another sort of similar flower somewhere on the loop, off to the CREA Trail to find ghost pipes. I continued on the other way and promptly found another cluster. Double victory!

more white flowers, one just nubs still — More California pinefoot, one just starting out.

close up on top flowers — Close up on some top flowers, which seem to be likely to have 5 petals while other flowers are likely to have 4.

strong white flowers — More of them, going strong.

Okay, so they were the same victory over again and I was actually looking for more than one species of flower. Still nice to find. I eventually got going up the hill. I found that this climb seems more gentle than the one on Hope Creek.

stalk with flowers like faces — The bog wintergreen is another monotrope, although it has a few green leaves around the base to get a little of its own food.

lots of orange spots — And all along the way, there are spots choked with leopard lilies.

I got to the top where a post marks the continuation of trail without noting the change from Ten Taypo to Hope Creek. I hadn't found any more flowers on my wish list. With my day not filled with plans, I gave continuing down the old road away from the maintained trail a chance. There does seem to be a channel that someone is keeping open. Seeing that no one has cleared the moss off any spot on a big log crossing it, that someone is probably not humans. Maybe it's the elk that the people talking of keys said would come by eventually at top all the delightful lilies.

trees and bushes — Admittedly, it is not very open, but there is a brushy track to walk along the old road.

I looked out over more tall, blooming rhododendrons while lunching on the log, then went back to maintained trail. I missed out on a few more locations noted to have goal flowers, but with ridiculously large accuracy estimates.

trees and flowers and gravel — Trail follows what was once an improved (with gravel) road. Now it is lined with lilies.

pink flowers — Still a few rhododendrons that are in prime blooming form.

I was getting closer to a cluster of points, some with reasonable accuracy estimates. I'd been looking a lot, but started looking even more around the duff for interesting flowers. I just came up with some corralroot.

stringy flowers in purple and yellow — Pacific corralroot is parasitic, but an orchid rather than a monotrope.

earless squirrel — The squirrel said "hi" and "get going".

Then, well past the point and probably by a different point, I finally found something. Something a little different from the first. Something on my list of hopeful sightings. Victory again!

triangle of sprouts of weird flowers — A small collection of fringed pinesap plants.

I headed down and although I continued to look for either more of the same or the one last flower on my list, I found no more.

pink flowers all the way up — There's plenty of rhododendrons still to see.

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