Page 134 - 2019 Travel Guide to California

HUMBOLDT COUNTY
Land of the world’s tallest trees
»EXPLORE, DINE,
TOUR, HIKE
Eureka-Humboldt
Visitors Bureau
visitredwoods.com
HUMBOLDT COUNTY’S 110 MILES of dra-
matic coastline is part of the Redwood Coast,
above; hiking among the world’s tallest trees
soothes the soul, below.
VISITORS HEAD TO THE FAR northwest
corner of California for the tallest red-
woods—indeed the tallest trees anywhere
in the world—but what pulls them under
Humboldt County’s spell is everything else:
the pristine coast, pastoral valleys, old
timber towns and a laid-back atmosphere
that evolved from its long-thriving (and
now largely legal) cannabis culture.
Start your trip with a walk in those
famous redwoods. The biggest payoff is in
Humboldt Redwoods State Park where
Rockefeller Grove holds 10 of the world’s 16
tallest trees, including spectacular stands
along Bull Creek. And, 2019 marks a
centennial: it was in 1919 that women of
Humboldt County started a campaign to
preserve old-growth redwoods.
Open Spaces
The county’s gorgeous array of open spaces
will compete for your time but don’t miss
Patrick’s Point, where seals, sea lions and
whales can be watched from rocky spots
above the Pacific.
Humboldt is also home to the Lost Coast,
an isolated stretch that is so difficult to
reach that engineers who built Highway 1
a hundred years ago—another 2019
centennial—avoided it and joined Highway
1 with inland Highway 101 instead.
132 2019 TRAVEL GUIDE TO CALIFORNIA
B Y L A U R A D E L R O S S O
However, much of the shore is easily
accessible and lined with windswept dunes
that stretch for miles. Take the drive along
the South Spit of Humboldt Bay, a narrow
finger of dunes that separate the bay from
the ocean, a bit of paradise for birders,
surfers or walkers packing a picnic. Out in
the waters, about 70 percent of California’s
oysters are cultivated.
Historic Architecture
Step back into time in Ferndale, a
preserved Victorian village that is on the
National Register of Historic Places. Once
a farming and dairy town, today its shop-
lined streets nestled in a green valley are
so picture-perfect they are used as movie
backdrops.
An ideal base for visitors is the county
seat of Eureka, which is easier to reach with
new non-stop flights to Los Angeles and in
June 2019 non-stops to Denver.
The city’s Old Town was recently named
a state cultural district due to its thriving arts
scene and Friday Night Markets. Board the
Madeket, the oldest continually operating
passenger vessel in the U.S., for a narrated
tour of natural wonders and history that
make this far corner of California—named
by Lonely Planet as the top U.S. Travel
destination in 2018—so alluring.
DON FORTHUBER, HUMBOLDT COUNTY CVB, VISITREDWOODS.COM; BOB VON NORMANN, HUMBOLDT COUNTY CVB, VISITREDWOODS.COM