Frommer's National Parks of the American West - Don Laine [334]
Vladimir's Czechoslovakian Restaurant
12785 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Inverness. ☎ 415/669-1021. Main courses $15 lunch; $28 dinner. No credit cards. Tues 3–9pm; Wed–Thurs 1–9pm; Fri–Sun noon–9:30pm. CZECHOSLOVAKIAN.
An Inverness institution, Vladimir's has been dishing out fantastic dishes since 1960 and is still going strong. The menu is dynamic, changing depending on the availability of ingredients. One night, goose or pheasant might be featured; on others, cabbage rolls, kielbasa, or Wiener schnitzel could be among your choices. You can sit inside in the quaint but elegant dining room or outside on the patio. There is a full bar. Note: Call ahead—the restaurant's hours are subject to the unpredictable Point Reyes weather and owner-chef's annual ski trips.
29
REDWOOD NATIONAL & STATE PARKS
by Eric Peterson
IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO EXPLAIN THE FEELING YOU GET IN THE OLD-GROWTH forests of Redwood National and State Parks without resorting to Alice in Wonderland comparisons. Like a tropical rain forest, the redwood forest is a multistoried affair, the tall trees being only the top layer. Everything is big, misty, and primeval; flowering bushes cover the ground, 10-foot-tall ferns line the creeks, and the smells are rich and musty. Out on the parks' crowd-free trails, it's impossible not to feel as if you've shrunk, or the rest of the world has grown, or else that you've gone back in time to the Jurassic epoch— dinosaurs would fit in here nicely.
When Archibald Menzies first noted the botanical existence of the coast redwood in 1794, more than 2 million acres of redwood forest carpeted California and Oregon. By 1965, heavy logging had reduced that to 300,000 acres, and it was obvious something had to be done if any redwoods were to survive. The state created several parks around individual groves in the 1920s, and in 1968 the federal government created Redwood National Park. In 1994, the National Park Service and the California Department of Parks and Recreation signed an agreement to manage the four contiguous redwood parks cooperatively— hence the name Redwood National and State Parks.
The 105,516-acre park offers a lesson in ecology. When the park was created to protect the biggest coast redwoods, logging companies continued to cut much of the surrounding area, sometimes right up to the park boundary. Unfortunately, redwoods in the park began to suffer as the quality of the Redwood Creek drainage declined from upstream logging, so in 1978 the government purchased a major section of the watershed, having learned that you can't preserve individual trees without preserving the ecosystem they depend on.
Although the logging of old-growth redwoods in the region is still a major bone of contention for the government, private landowners, and environmentalists, the trees thrive. They are living links to the age of dinosaurs and humble
reminders that the era of mankind is but a hiccup in time to the venerable Sequoia sempervirens.
Avoiding the Crowds. The parks include three major features—the ocean setting, the old-growth forests, and the prairies. Not many people discover the bald hills (called "prairies" here) that offer excellent views over the tops of the redwoods and down to the ocean. And, while the coastal environment and the shade of the redwoods can chill a hiker's bones year-round, these treeless spots are warm and sunny sanctuaries in the summertime. The prairie region also offers many opportunities to explore the park by hiking to the historic barns used during the ranching days before the park's establishment, visiting the School House Peak Firelook to check out the view, or hiking to the valley bottom along the Dolason Prairie Trail.
Just the Facts
GETTING THERE & GATEWAYS
The parks lie on a narrow strip near the coast in northern California, about 375 miles north of San Francisco. There are three major routes to the Redwood Coast. U.S. 101 links San Francisco and Brookings,