Wendy wanted to see the redwoods. So for our annual June vacation, I looked into returning to northernmost coastal California, where 18 years earlier I had walked among the tallest trees on Earth.
There are actually three distinct redwood species: the Dawn Redwood Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the Giant Sequoia Sequoiadendron giganteum, and the Coast Redwood Sequoia sempervirens.
The Dawn Redwood was thought to have been extinct for millions of years until it was rediscovered in 1944 by a forester in the Sichuan-Hubei region of China. The Giant Sequoias can grow to be truly massive, reaching up to 314 feet high and 30 feet in diameter. They are found in over 70 groves along the western slopes of California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range.
I focused on the Coast Redwoods, which are the tallest in the world, reaching up to 379 feet in height and 26 feet or more in diameter. They are kept continually damp by heavy winter rains and fog from the Pacific Ocean, but June and July are often sunny and pleasant in the Pacific Northwest.
Since Wendy hates crowds, I immediately discarded visiting Muir Woods near San Francisco or Big Basin 70 miles north of the metropolis, a location used in one of my favorite films, Hitchcock’s Vertigo.
We needed something far more remote, yet still impressive, so I figured I should take her to Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park near Crescent City, California and the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park farther south, which I had visited in July 2006.
However, back in 2006 I was on my own, happily bouncing down the coast of Oregon and into northern California, staying in 10 different hotels over two full weeks. Wendy wouldn’t enjoy that sort of trip. Instead, we needed to fly in close to the trees and spend most of our time in a rental cabin near the state parks.
So I booked us plane tickets from Tulsa to Medford, Oregon and booked a hotel in nearby Rogue River, from which we could drive to Jedediah Smith to see its Stout Grove and then spend a night in nearby Crescent City. I had fond memories of the beautiful Battery Point lighthouse there.
Then we could drive south to stay a few days at Elk Meadow Cabins and enjoy walks at Prairie Creek, before returning to Medford to fly home.
Knowing that flying to the Pacific Northwest from Oklahoma can be tiring, inevitably having to switch planes in Denver and always having the possibility of flight delays for mechanical issues or weather, I opted to bookend the trip with stays near the airport in Medford. To decrease the cost of the plane tickets, I extended our stay by one day in Medford to get a cheaper return flight on a Monday rather than a Sunday. So our vacation would consist of a week in the Pacific Northwest with flight days tacked onto each end.
As for transportation out west, I searched the rental possibilities at Medford and settled on the cheapest option of requesting a mini-van from Budget. We actually ended up with a full-size luxury SUV, as described in a previous post.
I have my 2006 trip budget for reference, so I thought I would compare the costs then, adjusted for inflation, to what I paid this time around. My solo coach-class round-trip plane tickets back in 2006 had cost $1,640 in 2024 dollars, so I didn’t mind paying $3,378 for two first-class tickets for this vacation. Our 8-day vehicle rental was $667 compared to $881 in 2024 dollars to rent a Ford Taurus for two weeks back in 2006. My hotel rooms back in 2006 had averaged $185 per night in 2024 dollars, while the multi-bedroom cabin and some hotel suites for our 2024 trip would boost our average nightly lodging to just over $250.
It was all good value for the money, as we had no issues on our flights, which were comfortable, I enjoyed driving the vehicle, and we had no problematic hotel rooms, with the cabin at Elk Meadow and then a Hilton Homewood suite we stayed at for a couple of nights in Medford being particularly peaceful and comfortable.
I will close with a map of our vacation, with details of the trip to follow in six subsequent posts over the coming week.
Meador Manor 