Portola Redwoods State Park

by Dave Burns on July 6, 2013

Portola Redwoods State Park is great park located about 30 minutes from our home in HMB. We had not yet visited, so Kelly and I took Lilly there to explore the area today.

Welcome to the park

Like other California state parks, most of the trails are off-limits to dogs, but fortunately dogs on-leash are permitted on paved roads. This is not one of California’s giant parks which if you’re a dog owner I think is an asset. Most of the roads are quite narrow and open mostly to park vehicles, effectively making them more like a path in the woods. Utilizing a retractable leash, Lilly was able to easily access plenty of interesting things to sniff.

Giant Redwoods

This particular park is mostly a tent campground, although there were some smaller RV’s and trailers present. The park literature suggests that no trailers longer than 20′ enter the grounds. I do think that a few sites could accommodate our 27′ trailer, but I would not even try as navigating through the park with a trailer of that length in tow would be a real challenge. It’s times like these when a pimped-out Class-B would be perfect.

Water tank

In our case that is not an option, so I think we will return with a tent and partake in some really nice car camping.

I’ll also note that there is absolute no voice or data coverage – the giant Redwood trees block all access. Consequently, don’t come here if you’re looking to work remotely and need connectivity.

A giant banana slug – very common on the park

All in all, this is a really nice park, especially given the close proximity to HMB. There are a number of really interesting trails and if dogs were allowed, this place might be perfect for us.