My friend’s flight was today so we knew we had to be back in San Francisco with time to spare. There seemed to be some scenic waterfall trails to do that were relatively short so we elected to try out Kings Creek Falls. After our big peak hikes the two previous days this did feel like a break but it was NOT a simple 2.3 mile stroll. And it’s not precisely a loop either, you can keep going after the falls to do a bigger loop that has offshoots if you want.

The nice thing about camping is waking up with the sunrise! So we had no issues getting up early this morning. I brought eggs, breakfast sausages and instant coffee for us so we had a nice big and hearty breakfast. Although I didn’t pack olive oil or salt so that’s something to get for our next camping trip haha. One annoying thing about this campsite is that they placed this huge concrete table on an incline so the whole thing is tilted.

I recently turned 30 and I knew for my birthday I wanted to get some camping and hiking time in. I’ve been to Lassen before but on a motorcycle roadtrip where we didn’t do much besides the scenic drive and swimming in a lake. Lassen’s snow takes a long time to melt and mid-July is in fact the best time to try to go for high elevation trails to be open.

We’ve been getting a lot of rain in San Francisco this season but we got a brief respite – the perfect day to go on a local hike! We decided to check out Angel Island State Park To get to Angel Island you must take a ferry, either from Tiburon or from the ferry building in San Francisco. The San Francisco ferry only runs twice in the morning but is convenient in that it takes clipper cards, including clipper from your phone.

Today was my Redwoods National Park hiking day. Planning this is kind of challenging because the park is actually a bunch of state parks bundled together and some of the hikes are about an hour apart from each other. For instance, I was actually already camping in Redwoods National Park by camping at Prairie Creek. To start, I packed up camp and drove back up the 5 mile dirt road from the night before.

It was a quick drive to my first hiking destination – Russian Gulch State Park. It’s been on my list for a year or two. I picked out the waterfall trail called Fern Canyon trail which is 5.4 - 6.3 miles depending on the route you take. The barebones route is on a pretty smooth path, nearly a fire road. You can definitely take bicicyles on it, you just can’t go all the way up to the waterfall with a bike.

As soon as I bought my car I knew I wanted to go on a road trip. One thing still hung over my head was the the Colombia River Gorge in Oregon. When I went in 2017 it was snowing so badly we couldn’t really see anything. Originally I planned to leave Sunday and just drive a lot on the first day. I think my intention was to use the entire day Saturday to prepare for my trip.

I thought it might be nice to include a bulleted list of destinations and resources so that if you’re planning your own trip, you can just grab information from here without having to dig through all my journals. Of course, I still recommend looking through the rest of the blog posts to see detailed advice and thoughts plus pictures! Coming up the California coast to Oregon, here’s what I did and where I stayed.

I’ve been really needing a vacation lately and this 3 day weekend was the perfect opportunity to get away! My boyfriend and I were in Napa not too long ago. His friends were interested in Sonoma though so we decided to switch it up. I’ve been to Sonoma once before in 2016 but I recall doing a wine bus tour and didn’t pick out any of the wineries myself. So this time around our wineries and restaurant choices were more curated as a group.

Thanks to my Utah and Virginia trips I actually completed my 2021 hiking goal already. I had a day off though and hadn’t gone out in a while so I referred back to my state parks list. Henry Cowell State Park is near Santa Cruz, so not too far away. I picked the Observation Deck trail because it is 5 miles out and back with 600 feet of elevation gain which seemed casual enough.