June 6-7, 2024 | Moorman Grove Photo Album | Cathedral Loop Photo Album

After our initial trek along part of the Cathedral Trees Trail, on subsequent days we had two more walks at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, along with a brief return to the ocean shore.

I researched the trails in the park and selected the Moorman Grove Trail. It is one of the least-travelled trails, following Sweet Creek up the hillside, rising 175 feet over a half-mile. Unlike most of the other trails in the park, it doesn’t connect to any others, so it seemed likely we might have the trail all to ourselves, and indeed we did.

We arrived at the trailhead along the Newton Drury Scenic Parkway in the afternoon, with no one else around.

We noticed that the trees near the road had plenty of moss.

We also noticed a memorial marker near the start of the trail.

Morris Belknap donated the grove in memory of two twin nephews who were killed in action while serving in the D-Day operations in Normandy, France in World War II. Morris was an artist who never married, the son of Morris Burke Belknap, Sr. and Lily Buckner. One of his sisters was another Lily Buckner Belknap, who married Judge Charles Harwood Moorman. The judge died in 1938, and their twin sons had gone into the army directly from prep school. Their deaths left her a widow with no living children or parents. While her brother chose to memorialize the twins by donating the redwood grove, she left $225,000 in their memory to The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where they had intended to enroll.

At one point the trail led under a fallen giant.

We decided to take a selfie in that spot as well.

We saw a few trees that had withstood past fires.

It was a beautiful walk in some very tall woods.

Later we drove south along 101 to the Thomas H. Kuchel Visitor Center on the Pacific shore.

The next day we returned to Prairie Creek Redwoods, parking on the parkway near the visitor center to walk a 2.5-mile loop formed of part of the Cathedral Trees Trail, the Cal-Barrel Road, and the Foothill Trail.

We had walked a segment of the Cathedral Trees Trail two days earlier between the Big Tree Wayside and Cal-Barrel Road. This time we started out at its southern terminus and followed it northeast with Boyes Creek to the south.

We saw some more mossy trees.

At one point, a group of fellow walkers provided scale for a shot.

I had to crane my neck to see the tops of the trees.

Wendy had me pose by the roots of one of the fallen giants.

The trail was steep at times, with us ascending over 300 feet in the first mile. When Wendy was ready to head back, instead of retracing our steps, I diverted us onto the Cal-Barrel Road, which I had driven in a rental car back in 2006.

The narrow logging road looked much like an extra-wide trail.

The road was built for the California Barrel Company, which had a mill 35 miles to the south in Arcata, California from 1902 to 1956 and was that town’s main employer.

We never encountered any cars along the road.

I chose not to follow the road all the way to the parkway drive, as I didn’t want to walk along the parkway itself to return to our car. Instead, I diverted again, off onto the Foothill Trail, which parallels the parkway from the Visitor Center north to the Big Tree Wayside.

We almost immediately encountered the Rotary Memorial Grove.

That was dedicated in 1952 by the Rotary Clubs of California. Rotarian Harvey Lyon, of Oakland, had thought of a memorial grove since his son, Bruce, died in a B-24 over Germany in 1945; Bruce had loved the redwoods. The Rotarians raised over $10,000, which was matched by the State of California, to acquire the grove.

At the dedication, Dr. Holland Burr remarked, “It would be a singularly unresponsive soul which could remain unimpressed by the redwoods. They stimulate reverence, wonder, and awe – and are an ever-living inspiration. . . .These great trees are scarred by fire and storm, but they carry on. Let that be an example.”

That was a fitting close to our walks in the redwoods. We would soon return to Medford to fly home, but we had one more adventure in store at a rock museum. See the next and final post in this series for that.

Moorman Grove Album | Cathedral Loop Album | < Redwoods V | Redwoods VII >