At the 6,000-acre Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, where the towering redwood trees are liable to be shroud­ed in damp fog even at the height of summer, the evocatively-named Damnation Creek Trail (accessed from Hwy-101) runs for 2½ miles along the route of an ancient Yurok Native American track and rises steeply as it passes through groves of old-growth redwoods before emerging on to a small, secluded beach.

Slightly further north, simpler trails penetrate the sections of the park where logging took place from the 1920s. The redwoods you’ll find here – along the Memorial Grove and Hobbs-Wood Trails – are younger, second-growth trees steadily reclaiming the forest: abandoned trestles and odd bits of machinery remain from the logging days.