The Humboldt Redwoods State Park Visitor Center sits on the Avenue of the Giants between Myers Flat and Weott, beside Burlington Campground, and it makes a natural place to plan a day in the park. The nonprofit Humboldt Redwoods Interpretive Association runs it with volunteer staff, and its hands-on exhibits, theater, library and gift shop help pay for education in the park. Visitors can pick up maps and brochures and ask about hikes, directions, ecology and history. The park covers more than fifty-three thousand acres, about seventeen thousand of them old-growth coast redwood, so a few minutes here helps travelers decide where to spend their time. The center is open seven days a week, closing only for Thanksgiving and Christmas, with shorter hours from October through April.
If you drove past the Humboldt Redwoods State Park Visitor Center, a mile back by Burlington Campground, it's worth turning around for the twenty minutes. It's free, there's a good little museum, restrooms, maps, and rangers who can tell you which grove is glowing that week. And somewhere back there, look for the flood marker — a post with a line painted way, way up above your head, marking how high the water stood in the great flood of nineteen sixty-four. When you see how far up that line is, it stops being a statistic. Boone has told you what that night was like for the people who lived here. The center is also the best place to ask about the walking trails — there are dozens, most of them flat and easy, and the Avenue only half works from behind glass. You have to get out and stand under them.
Photo: Sarah Stierch (Missvain) · CC0