Camping in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

where we camp for the first time, see some giant trees and learn a lesson about Airbnb booking

As we drove further south along the Pacific Coast we waved goodbye to Oregon and crossed over into Northern California. We had a border check between states but this one was about as relaxed as it gets and went along the lines of “Are you carrying any food or plants into California?”, “No”, “Ok, have a nice day”. That was it.

Much like crossing from Canada into the U.S., we got a small kick out of driving into California. It wasn’t that California held a major place in our hearts, it was just that our image of California up to this point had come from television, film, the internet and books and so to be actually crossing into the state just seemed like such a surreal thing to be doing. It reminded us – not for the first time – just how lucky we were to be doing this trip.

Having said all that, we were now driving through Northern not Southern California and though the scenery was certainly changing the further south we drove, we weren’t yet in the land of golden beaches. The mist was still rolling in from the Pacific and though we did see some surfers braving the waters they were taking off from grey, windswept beaches, paddling under cloudy grey skies and through a choppy grey ocean. Everything was very grey just at that point! (the scenery that is, our moods weren’t grey, we were still loving the sights).

The grey scenery faded as we got closer to the Redwoods and we started to see green forestry stretching out in front of us. The trees lining the road were huge as promised with some spectacularly big ones dwarfing others. The further we drove in the bigger the trees seemed to get.

We pulled into Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in the early afternoon. This was our first go at camping in North America so everything about the campground was new to us. We hadn’t been able to reserve a campsite online as it was peak season so we had to depend on there being enough walk-up campsites still free when we got there.

There was a booth just at the entrance to the campground staffed by Rangers. These very friendly people gave us the good news that there were plenty of free sites left. They gave us a map of the campground, marked in the campsites that were available and told us to go ahead and check them out before paying.

Back in Oregon we had decided to taken advantage of the state’s lack of sales tax and buy all that we’d need for camping. At the very least we needed a tent, one sleeping bag (we’d brought one with us from Ireland), a stove and some cooking and eating utensils. We went into an REI (Recreational Equipment Inc) to have a look at what we could get. After doing some quick pricing we realised it was going to run into hundreds to get even just the basics we needed. Because we were working on a tight budget, we decided to compare prices in Walmart.

This is something we didn’t feel overly great about. First of all, we realised that a lot of the stuff we wanted in Walmart would be lower quality to what we’d get in a specialist retailers like REI but that was ok because we didn’t even know yet if camping would work out for us over the trip and if it didn’t then we’d have sunk a load of money into camping gear that didn’t come out of the back of the car for the rest of the trip. Secondly, something about the scale that Walmart operates at leaves us a little uneasy and, besides economy of scale, you really have to wonder how they can sell things so cheaply and who’s being screwed over because of it. As it turned out, everything we needed was in Walmart for a fraction of the price. We agreed to park our concerns and get what we needed because we really couldn’t afford to do it any other way. What we got included a four man tent (as you’d expect, it really only fits two people comfortably), one sleeping bag, a Primus stove, two Primus refills, a cooler bag, camp plates and, as a touch of luxury, we also picked up an airbed and electric pump. And that’s the gear we rocked up to Jedediah with.

Jedediah is a really well serviced campsite. We drove in and were bowled over with the standard of the place. There were about 30 campsites spread out along a looping forest path, separated from each other by wide stretches of greenery. The path was paved. There were flush toilets (something that seemed a novelty compared to other sites we looked at) and each campsite had a fire pit, picnic table, bear locker (which is for locking up your food at night, safe from the bears that apparently wander through occasionally) and room for at least one car and a tent.

There were actually so many free spaces that we had a job picking the best. Eventually, after much to-ing and fro-ing, we picked a site. This one was a little bit away from other occupied sites and close enough to the toilets so that we could find them in the middle of the night but far enough away that we couldn’t see, hear or smell them. We noted down our campsite number and went back out to the booth to pay and buy some firewood for our campfire. We set up the tent relatively quickly considering it was our first go and went off to explore the campground which mainly consisted of finding a river, camp showers, a ranger station and, more importantly, many huge trees.

During our walk, a woman came up to us and asked if we knew what poison ivy looked like. Wow, she asking the wrong people! Though, I think she realised that as soon as we opened our mouths. Most four year old American kids would probably have a better idea of what poison ivy looks like than we do (we really need to fix that if we keep up this camping!). Anyway, just so no one was in any doubt we confirmed to her that we hadn’t the faintest idea what poison ivy looked like. She muttered something about it being over by the drinking fountain and that she better find a ranger to inform them. We told her this was an excellent idea…then we headed for the water fountain just to see if we could spot it. Nope. Lots of different types weeds. Possibly all poison ivy, possibly none.

Thanks to our exploring it was dark by the time we were putting dinner on. We’d noticed that all our neighbours had finished eating and doing dishes before we even had the tent up so we made a mental note to work on our timing a bit. Our dinner consisted of beans (vegetarian – not as easy as you’d think to find vegetarian baked beans in America…) , sausages (vegetarian) and bagels (obviously vegetarian), all cooked on the fire. This was our first self-cooked meal since leaving Ireland thanks to our Airbnb-ing and it tasted all the better because of it. Afterwards we washed up and put all our food in the bear locker. Then noticed that the entire camp was in darkness (toilets aside) so we figured that we better follow suit.

The next morning when we woke we saw that already many of the campers had packed up and gone. It was 8 o’clock. Such is the life of camping people, guided by the sun it seems. We settled down to making coffee and eating last nights left overs for breakfast. Because the fire was out and not worth re-lighting, we set up the Primus and boiled a pot of water. Then we packed the tent, sleeping bags and air mattress back into their various bags. Always fun. Aside from the very healthy mosquito population, the first night of camping was a total success and we were sorry to be leaving.

On the way to San Francisco we left the Redwoods briefly as we drove out of Jedediah but ahead of us we had a few more Redwood parks including the Avenue of the Giants to pass through. More pressingly we had yet to organise accommodation for the night so our more immediate task was finding somewhere with wi-fi so we could find and book a place. We pulled into a Starbucks in Crescent city, bought some coffee and settled down to find a place to stay.

Using Airbnb again, we found a pretty nice place in a good location in San Francisco and put in a request to book. There are two ways to book a place on Airbnb depending on the hosts preference. Either they have it set up so you can “instant book” which means once you hit “book” your place for the night is guaranteed, or they have it set up so that you request the night and they manually check your booking and respond to let you know if it’s free or not. Instant booking is great for people in a rush, while requesting to book is a bit of a pain, it’s the way most Airbnb hosts set up their places and it lets them pick and choose who stays. This is all fair enough and surely must cut down on the number of axe murders coming to stay. If we were Airbnb hosts, we’d probably set our place up as a request to book.

But anyway, the place we booked needed a response so we booked it and waited…and waited. We held on in Starbucks for a little while longer and managed to catch up with family at home while there but got no response. We weren’t too panicked because we’d had great responses so far with Airbnb and no problems. We decided to drive on and check wi-fi in a couple of hours.

We headed further south and took a detour off the 101 to drive through the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. We had seen some pretty spectacularly sized trees the night before but these blew us away completely. We crawled along the avenue at the same slow pace as every other car we saw and took advantage of the many pull over spots to get a closer look and take photos. Reluctantly we pulled off the avenue and rejoined the 101. In the back of our heads we were still wondering about accommodation that night.

We found a McDonalds further south and pulled in to use their wi-fi. We bought a couple of coffees to book our wi-fi time – on a side note, McDonald’s coffee in North America is really, really poor compared to what you get in an Irish McDonalds. Anyway, what we found with our Airbnb booking was that it still wasn’t accepted. It was 6pm and that fact turned out to be pretty critical. We sent the guy a message through the site asking if it was possible to stay and waited for a response. In the meantime we looked online for motels between where we were and San Francisco. The online sites wouldn’t process a booking for that night because of the time of day. Still working off our Irish phones we rang a few motels and hotels using our Skype credit only to find that they were booked out. It was almost time to start worrying.

We were about 3 hours out from San Francisco. We looked for other options on Airbnb but they were thin on the ground. We decided to drive on and pull off the road to try a few motels as we went. It was Saturday night and motel after motel was booked solid. Was it time to consider sleeping in the car?!

Getting close to San Francisco we pulled into Santa Rosa for one last go at Starbucks’ wi-fi. Still no answer from our original guy and options were getting to be slim. In a moment of calm between many moments of panic (it was getting up to 11pm) we realised that if we didn’t want this happening again tomorrow night then we’d need to find a place immediately and book it for then too. This move turned out to save us. We found a place in an alright location, sent a request to book (all instant book places were gone) and got an almost immediate reply accepting our request. One worry off the list. Then, completely chancing our arm, we messaged this guy to see if his place was free that night too. The response we got couldn’t have been more welcome. Yes, room available that night too. Success. This guy had just saved us from our first proper accommodation headache of the trip. (Unbelievably, our original Airbnb guy sent us a message literally moments after this to let is know that his place was available. 12 hours later. We sent him a pretty restrained reply all things considered declining his gracious offer…)

So thanks to an Airbnb host named Yann it was onto San Francisco for the night. More about how that went in our next post.

our next destination: San Francisco ⇒