In the latter half of 2021, I explored a new world of work! I left the classroom behind to head outside. Working for California State Parks in two Northern California locations was an awesome life experience.
Humboldt Redwoods State Park
The park
Humboldt Redwoods is a famous member of the pantheon of California State Parks that’s located in southern Humboldt county. It’s about three hours north of San Francisco, and two hours south of the Oregon border. HRSP is huge: containing both the largest stand of old-growth coast redwoods, plus prairies and mixed forest besides. The main attraction of this park is, of course, sequioa sempervirens: the tallest trees on Earth!
The famed Avenue of the Giants is the park’s main drag, a scenic alternate to the parallel highway 101. (The scenery on the slender Mattole Road nearby is even more spectacular!) Avenue of the Giants is home to several small towns which offer a few dining and refueling options. For staying over, there are three main campsites in the park – along with a several environmental/backcountry camping spots.
Humboldt Redwoods has over 100 miles of trail for pedestrian travel. Horses and mountain bikes are also welcome on the park’s numerous former logging roads turned multi-use trails. The Eel River, which winds through the park alongside the Avenue of the Giants, is another place to play! Particularly because, as HRSP is inland from the coast, the park experiences warm summers.
Kent and I loved playing in this park long before I got a job working there. Some of our very best runs in the US took place right here, including our very own ultra! I’m obsessed with Grasshopper Peak – the highest point in the park and in the county. The gloriously green River and Johnson trails are personal faves – but I’m also partial to the most remote roads, like Tan Bark and all the variations of Greig MUT.
As far as camping, Whiskey Flats is an incredible backpacking experience. All alone in a distant, old-growth forest below a mountain peak? Yes, please! Albee Creek is my top spot for car camping, because it’s small, quiet and has diverse scenery. It’s also a superb place for wildlife watching: from bears to deer to snakes to spotted skunks!
The work
In June 2021, I got a job at HRSP. I spent most of my summer working at the Hidden Springs – the largest and most southerly of the park’s campsites. In truth, I was primarily a cashier: trading cash for campsite assignments. But I lived for the moments when someone would ask me about hiking trails!
One of my favorite aspects of this new line of work was how active it was. I was on my feet for 10 hours a day, four days a week. I was constantly in motion: checking license plates, speaking to people and walking all around the campground doing checks. It wasn’t exactly manual labor, but it was a very welcome change from sitting behind a laptop screen all day.
I also loved being outside all day, every day! It’s something special to work in a place you adore and get to look at it all the hours of the day. Even inside the kiosk, my favorite forest was just beyond the window.
My commute was even fun for me, because it was my first! The park was about an hour away from where I lived, along a scenic and recently repaved section of the 101. It was a great opportunity to enjoy a fun beverage and listen to music!
Another fun fact about my work? I worked with an all-female team, the self-titled ‘state cakes’. After an intense summer of working together, we became pretty close.
While I loved my new gig, there were challenges, too. I was initially really surprised to find not a single other trail nerd among my entire, extended work crew. Then there was working with the public – the American public – which I found to be tough work. The town neighboring my campground is a little rough around the edges, and I had to radio out for help several times. I dreaded doing cash every night in my brightly-lit glass cube: a beacon for a robbery. I started carrying pepper spray, and there were times late at night when I would lock the kiosk, sprint to my car and hide in it until I felt sure I was alone.
I’ve been so sheltered living in the relative safety of East Asia for so many years, that at first this felt wild! But, as things do, it normalized pretty quickly. I was fortunate that most of my fears resided only in my imagination – and for the times it got real, I had the support of a great ranger team.
My position was meant to last until Labor Day in early September, but that weekend came and went. There was more work to be done, and I was chosen to close down the campground for the season. After cleaning out the kiosk, driving the gator back to HQ and locking the campground gate, I still stayed on at the park! I spent an additional couple of weeks working at Burlington campground and in the rangers’ office. I only finally said goodbye to this park in mid-October.
During my time at HRSP, I did also consider becoming a California State Park ranger – even going so far as to attend a battery of tests for the position! But ultimately, the heavy law enforcement element helped me make up my mind that it was not quite the right work for me.
The housing
After a few weeks of commuting to Humboldt Redwoods, I opted to take the offered park housing because it was an incredible deal. For a small portion of my wages, I could stay in an empty ranger house: all by myself! Much as I enjoyed the drive initially, it was tiring after my long days. And, more importantly, I desperately needed a change.
My rambling ranger accommodations featured three bedrooms: two of which I left closed and completely untouched. The third, with windows on two sides, I furnished with twinkle lights, an air mattress and a handful of adventure photos. The living room became my own personal gym – complete with exercise ball, a bunch of hand weights and a yoga mat. I had a home!
I didn’t spend too much time in it, though: I was just too busy! The night before my four-day workweek, I would drive to the park and camp out until my last shift. On work days, I worked out and made food at the start of the day, and at the end I would make more food and crawl into bed early.
Much as I loved my personal space, it was difficult to live apart from Kent. The park rules were strict: park housing was only for park employees – particularly for seasonal positions such as mine. We’d calculated it as our best option for my work and wellbeing, but it was still tough!
However, I’d needed my own space after an unexpected shared living experience, and I was in the midst of questioning my whole life. This was something I needed. My days of renting there were numbered, so I tried to make the most of them.
The mission
Before I started working for California State Parks, I was a fan. Kent and I have visited plenty of parks – including this one! Indeed, we’d already run many of the longer trails in the park – even a secret, celebratory ultra for the park’s centennial! Once established in my kiosk for the summer, however, I realized that we had barely begun.
I spent a lot of time studying the park brochure, which included a trail map. And soon an idea was born: what if I tread every single mile of trail in my park? So that’s exactly what I spent the rest of my summer doing!
There were runs: mostly quick, solo outings before work. And there were hikes: jaunts and sits of various lengths, usually when Kent came to visit. Although we’d already enjoyed most of the longer trails, there were a wealth of smaller trails in little groves I never would have seen if it had not been for this mission!
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
Thanks to my truly awesome boss at Humboldt Redwoods, my seasonal work at California State Parks continued. One week after bidding farewell to HRSP, I was learning the ropes at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.
The park
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park is north of Humboldt Redwoods: it’s about a five hour drive up the coast from the Bay Area, and a little less than an hour south of the Oregon border. PCRSP is in Humboldt county, but barely: it borders Del Norte, the last county on the California coast.
PCRSP is unique because it is managed by both California State Parks and Redwood National Parks. The national park borders and surrounds the state park. The main draw is more of those incredible coast redwoods that grow to tremendous heights here!
Prairie Creek lies directly on the coast, so it has a very different environment compared to Humboldt Redwoods. This park spends a lot more time shrouded in fog, so it’s cool and damp year round. It does have a central prairie – that gives the park it’s name – and it does feature incredible trees, but that’s about where the similarities end.
The landscape at Prairie Creek is rolling hills rather than mountains. There are no towns within the park, and the two campgrounds are small. There’s no river bar action, but there is a wild, wave-splashed beach and a creek-filled canyon.
The trails in this park are all single-track, and meant for pedestrians only. The 75 miles of trail wind through nonstop redwoods, making for some truly blissful hiking and running! The California Coastal Trail runs along the edge of Prairie Creek Redwoods, and stroll through Fern Canyon is a fan favorite.
For Kent and I, this was a long-time favorite for us, too: we’d been playing here even before we ventured south to Humboldt Redwoods, and returned time and time again for this park’s trademark tranquility. I’m enchanted by the redwood splendor of the West Ridge Trail. Friendship Ridge offers complete solitude – and the California Coastal Trail here has ephemeral waterfalls that are out of this world!
We actually never stayed over at this park, but in addition to a dozen fun runs, we also ran another of our very own ultras here: the Golden Prairie Skunk Ultra! While we didn’t quite capture every single trail in PCRSP, we did get almost all of the trails in the neighboring national park, so – not bad for exploring this area in depth!
The work
I only worked for Prairie Creek Redwoods for a little over a month. Although I interviewed for a more permeant position, I wound up doing the same gig as I’d done at Humboldt. Even though I adored the park itself just as dearly, I suppose you could see this as the beginning of the end of my time at parks. Had I have scored the interpretive trainee position, who knows how long I might have stayed with California State Parks?
Although my title was the same, my position was decidedly different at PCRSP. Instead of being based solely at one campground, like in Humboldt, I would be driving back and forth between two. Another difference: the campsites were usually booked online rather than in person. So rather than interacting with campers, I spent the majority of my time collecting fees from and interacting with day visitors to the Gold Bluffs Beach/Fern Canyon area of the park.
There was a lot less walking around for campground checks and the like than there had been at Humboldt Redwoods, but I was still on my feet, and still in the forest. So I continued to enjoy my days at work.
I also adored driving the parks truck! Driving had been a rare treat at Humboldt Redwoods, but at Prairie Creek, I drove the truck often! After all, we were working in two different locations every day! The drive between Elk Meadow and Gold Bluffs, on Davison Road, was a delight every single time.
While at Humboldt, I almost always worked with others. At Prairie Creek, I sometimes got to work alone. And those were some of my favorite days! It was fun to spend the day alone in the woods with ample time for looking at the little things and thinking.
However, there were not a lot of those days: I had far fewer shifts at this park because life kept interrupting. First with an unexpected invitation to my green card interview (at last!). Then with an urgent need to go back to Canada. All told, I think I only did a dozen shifts at Prairie Creek!
The housing
A large part of the reason that working at Prairie Creek longer term wasn’t an option for me is because there was no housing. Well, there was – but I didn’t want to move into the group house and bunk with my coworkers. It was time for Kent and I to figure out something that would work for the two of us together: whatever, and wherever that was!
Indeed, we had to cobble together a pretty bonky arrangement while I worked at this park. I couldn’t just go back to living with the in-laws after having my own place – especially with more family members visiting and staying indefinitely! We didn’t tell anyone, but we rented a string of cabins over the month that I worked at Prairie Creek. Even if I had wanted to stay, it wasn’t sustainable.
The farewell
Circumstances dictated a rushed exit from my life at California State Parks: I savored my last day in uniform, working alone – but it was a brief goodbye. I left a borrowed jacket and my ring of keys inside the kiosk two nights before I left the country. And it was only after that that I told everyone I was leaving!
I’m forever grateful for my summer at California State Parks. It was so neat to work in the places where I love to play and see behind the scenes. I also really enjoyed trying on another line of work for size, and getting to spend my days outside. Plus, this was my first – and only – American job! This is what Kent and I had worked for since the beginning of the pandemic: the freedom for me to be able to work in the US.
And now, I had. I liked it, a lot, but it was time for me to move on to new adventures. I was about to trade the temperate rainforest for the tropics!