Montgomery Woods held the tallest known tree in the world for a while, and it still holds one of the finest old-growth groves anywhere. It sits on a flat bench along Montgomery Creek where nothing has ever been cut, and the quiet in there is total, the sort you notice in your ears. The loop is about two miles, with a steep third of a mile at the start and then flat, easy walking through five separate groves, each one somehow bigger than the last.
In the afternoon we’ll drive two miles further down the same twisty road to Vichy Springs and get in the water, which after a morning of walking is exactly as good as it sounds. The mineral baths there are naturally carbonated, so you sit in warm water that fizzes, and they’ve been running without a break since 1854. It’s the same water Mark Twain and Jack London came up for. Lunch on the lawn first, then three hours to yourself between the hot pool, the Olympic pool and seven hundred acres of trails if you’d rather keep walking.
It’s a wonderful day in the rain, which is worth knowing on this coast, and people tend to book it twice.
