I was a Midwesterner who had never been to California's Redwood National and State Parks.
Since US Highway 101 runs through the parks, they were accessible by car.
The tallest trees in the world are Coast redwoods.
I've wanted to visit the National and State Parks for a long time.
One of only 24 UNESCO-designated world-heritage sites in the US, California's Redwood National and State Parks are full of coast redwoods, the tallest trees on the planet that are the last of a 160-million-year-old species.
The area has been used as the real-life backdrop for several film franchises, such as Star Wars andJurassic Park.
I was entranced by the coastal red forests when I was a kid in the suburbs of flat Illinois.
The park was stunning when I visited as an adult.
There are three state parks that make up the Redwood National Park.
I didn't know that the site is a collection of three state parks along Northern California's coastline on the ancestral homelands of the Yurok Tribe and the Tolowa Dee-ni.
There are other state parks that are not officially included in the borders. They have their own incredible flora and fauna, and I was told to visit the Avenue of the Giants.
I lost myself in the beauty of the surrounding forests when I gave up trying to keep track of boundaries.
The depths of the parks were accessible by car.
The drive to and through the state parks was amazing.
US Highway 101 runs through the parks. The trees hugged the road.
The way off of the highway was made even narrower by the huge tree trunks that cut into the service roads. I was able to touch their bark from the car window.
The happy medium between the busy highway and bumpy service roads was Avenue of the Giants. Driving down the paved route felt like traveling through a tunnel with walls of red bark and a sun-dappled, green roof.
I was blown away by the size of the coast redwoods.
I had high expectations for the height of the coast redwoods, but their actual size still confused me.
The average redwood is only photographed in a vertical panoramic, and I could walk through a fallen trunk on the trail.
We drove my car through a standing redwood that had a hole in it's trunk.
They were right next to each other and surrounded by hundreds of mammoths left me in awe.
There are many amazing trees in the park.
I assumed the only tree in the park was the coast redwoods when I saw a travel poster that only featured them. That was not true advertising.
The coast redwoods are the most unique tree in the area, but there were many other trees nearby. It was even more beautiful to experience this varied and complex system.
I saw giant Douglas firs with rough bark like dragon scales, thick western red cedars, and madrone trees that looked like they were painted.
There is a real-life banana slug.
I had only heard of banana slugs in reference to the UC Santa Cruz mascot, so I never thought I would see one in the wild.
I whispered to my hiking partner to stop when I saw a small yellow slime on the path.
My heart swelled with love as the slug and I made eye contact, their eyes moving up and down to meet my humans.
Excited to meet another person and anxious not to step on one, I spent a lot of my trip looking for banana slugs.
There are plants that are poisonous.
One of my traveling companions thought he found a wild carrot plant. He was chewing the leaves when we discovered it was poison hemlock.
He spat out the plant and then washed his mouth out of the river.
The poison control person at our campsite gave my companion a hard time but said he was going to be fine.
I was surprised by the amount of poison that was growing along the trails, but I think it was a mistake.
The ground-bound flora in Fern Canyon is just as beautiful as the trees.
Fern Canyon is full of stunning sites, so much so that it was the backdrop of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
I followed a creek upstream and used rocks and logs as a dry path. My hiking boots were soaking wet from the failed jump, but I didn't have to be grumpy once I turned into the ravine.
The walls were covered with hundreds of emerald-green ferns that covered them arching like leafy waterfalls and absorbing every sound except for the rushing creek and trickle water between their roots.
I was in awe of the beauty of the park.
The original article can be found on Insider.
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