Find Your Park | Swanson Family Blog

4 Days in Redwood National Park

Posted on April 8, 2022 by karalswanson

We spent 4 days of spring break exploring Redwood National Park in northern California! We left on Friday and drove 10 hours to Crescent City, California and returned the following Wednesday. We stayed in a VRBO apartment on the same block as the Redwood National Park Headquarters. We were surprised by the large homeless population in Crescent City, but other than that it wasn’t very busy at all. I would imagine Crescent City would be a lot busier during the summer. Entry to Redwood National/State parks is free!

Day 1: The first Saturday of every month October-May they close the 10 mile Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway to motorized traffic. Bikers (including e-bikes), rollerbladers, walkers, skateboarders, etc. can take advantage of this gorgeous road without having to worry about traffic! Our kids were able to pedal bike 7.5 miles each direction through the beautiful trees! We pulled over at a couple spots for quick little hikes and for lunch. One thing to note though: it is uphill from south to north/downhill north to south. The very north part of the road is a 6% grade. There was plenty of parking along the side of the road to unload bikes for the road.

Day 2: In the morning we visited Battery Point Lighthouse. This area is only accessible during low tide. There was an option of a $5 tour of the inside of the lighthouse but we just looked around outside and checked out the tide pools around the base of the lighthouse.

In the afternoon, we drove on Howland Hill Road and hiked around Stout Grove (about 1 mile, basically flat) and Grove of the Titans (about 3 miles, some elevation change. This one just recently officially opened so it wasn’t on the park maps yet). Grove of the Titans was probably my favorite thing of the entire trip. It felt like we were in the movie Avatar with the ENORMOUS trees we were walking around. They recently added steel boardwalks around the last bit of the trail to help protect the forest and the entire hike was just magical. Parking was somewhat limited along Howland Hill Road and the road itself is only 1.5 car lengths wide so you need to pull over when two cars pass each other. The trees were so impressive even just driving the road!

Day 3: We drove south to Fern Canyon. No permit is needed during the winter but a free permit is required during the summer so they can limit visitors. There is a $12 cash only entry fee, but if you have a National Park Pass, that is accepted as well. Fern Canyon has huge fern-lined walls on either side of the creek. It had rained quite a bit the night before we were there (and continued to rain while we hiked) so the water was running pretty strong. Wearing knee-high muck boots were the only way we were able to stay dry. In the summer the creek bed is much drier and they add little foot bridges to the hike. You can either hike back along the rim of the canyon or go back down the way you came! Part of Jurassic Park was filmed in Fern Canyon! There is a creek you have to cross with your car to get to the trail head. We decided not to cross it with our van since the water was up to our knees the day we visited so we parked and walked an extra mile along a dirt road to reach the trail head. Bigger trucks were able to make it across and I’m guessing on a drier day our car would have made it too!

Day 4: Endert’s Beach and Crescent Beach: Endert’s beach is about a 1/2 mile wide downhill path to the beach. The beach was gorgeous and we even saw a sea otter! In the afternoon while Goldie napped, Seth walked down to Crescent beach with the kids to look for sand dollars. Crescent Beach is a long, wide, and sandy. It looks like a wonderful place to hang out in the summer!

Day 5: (Drive home day) We drove up Highway 101 and stopped at the Oregon Dunes Day Use Area and hiked a mile on sand out to the beach and back. In retrospect we could have just stayed in the sandy area near the car and let the kids play on the sandy dunes. The beach was pretty, but similar to the other beaches that we had driven by all day.

All in all it was a wonderful trip! I’m sure there are many more hikes we could have done, but we got a really good overview of the park. April was an awesome time to visit because it wasn’t crowded at all and parking/permits were never an issue. If you have a chance, I’d highly recommend that you spend some time in the Redwoods! I’d love to answer any other questions you have and always love hearing recommendations of where to go!

A Week at Mt. Rainier National Park

Posted on July 27, 2021 by karalswanson

We planned for months to do a week-long camping trip at Glacier National Park but two days before we left we still were not able to get a Going to the Sun Road ticket (the website always crashed when everyone tried to buy tickets at the same time every morning and were instantly sold out) AND the weather was forecasted to be 100 degrees and smoky. 24 hours before we left, we decided to spend the week at Mt. Rainier instead! The weather was forecasted to be perfect and we called the park to make sure we thought we could get a first-come-first-serve camping spot. We are so glad we changed it up last minute!

Cougar Rock Campground fills up fast in the morning, especially on weekends! It has flush toilets, soap, paper towels, and drinking water but no hot water or showers.

Day 1: We had everything packed Thursday evening and left Friday morning for a family birthday party a couple hours from our house. We stayed in a hotel Friday night and left at 4:30am to arrive at Cougar Rock Campground by 7am. Seth waited in line at the ranger station until the ranger arrived at 7:30. There were 14 camping spots available for the day and we got the 6th one! Our camp spot was still occupied so we drove to Grove of the Patriarchs for a morning hike. Grove of the Patriarchs has enormous old-growth trees and a suspension bridge. Round-trip it is 1.5 miles and totally doable with little kids. In the afternoon we got to our campsite and set up our camp!

Grove of the Patriarchs Suspension Bridge

Day 2: Sunday we drove up to the Sunrise area of Mt. Rainier. Looking back we probably should have gone on a weekday since we had to wait over an hour in line to enter the Sunrise area – they were letting cars in as cars drove out to make sure the parking lots were not overwhelmed. We were easily able to find a parking spot once we were in though! We did a hot and dusty 2-mile hike called the Silver Forest Trail. The views of Rainier were nice but were pretty much the same the entire way.

Day 3: We spent the day in the Paradise area of Mt. Rainier. The Paradise area is pretty much the only area in the park with full cell phone service. We took the Skyline Trail to Myrtle Fall and then continued on for about another 3/4 of a mile. There were gorgeous views of Rainier, wildflowers, streams and the trail had a good mix of shade and sun! The kids also completed their Junior Ranger booklets and got their Junior Ranger badges at the Paradise ranger station.

Day 4: This was our biggest day, and probably deserves its own blog post! We drove 3 hours south to Mt. St. Helens to hike the Ape Caves, a lava tube tunnel that is open to the public. Ape Caves does require a reservation and a $2 reservation fee, but it covers your whole car of people. There were plenty of spots available for a reservation when we booked a couple days in advance! There is an upper cave more difficult section and a lower, easier .75 mile section. We did the lower cave and it was perfect for the kids! It is definitely not wheelchair/stroller accessible but our kids were able to walk the entire way themselves.

Day 5: We woke up to cloudy skies and a colder campground on Wednesday. When it is cloudy at Mt. Rainier you aren’t able to see the mountain at all. We drove back up to Paradise and explored the Paradise Historic Inn. The kids enjoyed splitting a cinnamon roll from the cafe and Seth and I got some coffee. It felt warm and cozy and was a great morning of relaxing after our 6 hours of driving the day before. In the afternoon, we drove down to Longmire and walked around the 1/2 mile Trail of the Shadows nature trail. The clouds cleared by the afternoon and it ended up being the only cloudy day!

There are a lot of different areas to pull over and see waterfalls on the side of the road!

Day 6: Another out of park adventure day, we drove to Crystal Mountain Resort and took the gondola up the ski area. The views were incredible – you can see Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Adams from the top. We enjoyed our packed lunch at the top and did a little bit of hiking. There is a restaurant at the top for anyone wanting to pay $25 for lunch. You are able to hike down the 5 miles if you want, but the kids really wanted to ride the gondola back down!

Day 7: Our final day! We packed up our camp in the morning and explored part of the Carter Falls trail which starts right across the road from Cougar Rock Campground. This trail was really beautiful and we could have probably done more of the hike if we were ready with water and hiking shoes on the kids! We met some people on the trail from the Glacier area this day and they told us it was very busy, smoky, and hot in Montana – we were so thankful we chose Rainier!

I’d love to answer any questions about visiting or staying at Mt. Rainier National Park! It was a wonderful family camping trip! There are incredible longer hikes in the area too if you have older kids or no kids with you!