Grizzly Creek Campground

Grizzly Creek was probably a really nice campground when it was built in the 1940s, but is now plagued with constant high-speed traffic noise. The campground on State Route 36, a two-lane highway that’s one of the very few roads in and out of Humboldt County. Some of the campsites are only about 10 feet from the road, close enough that when cars roar by at 60 mph you can feel the breeze from them. None of the sites are more than about 50 yards away so there’s really no relief from the noise anywhere in the campground. Worse, the campground is on one of the few straightaways on what’s otherwise a very curvy road, so everyone guns their engine as they drive by the campground, including really noisy trucks, which seem to be especially plentiful.

Site 21. The embankment in the background is Route 36.

On the other hand, the campground is in a pretty scenic old-growth redwood grove and is one of the very few places where you can camp under old-growth redwoods. The sites that are right on the highway have the best redwoods; in fact, full-sized old-growth redwoods can only be found right next to the highway, and the size of the redwoods falls off very quickly as you get further from the highway. Even though the campground is only a few yards wide, the sites furthest from the highway are completely out of the redwoods. However, those sites are on a pretty scenic river so they have a different kind of charm.

Typically for a state park, the campground is well maintained. The campsites seem packed pretty close together, but that’s pretty typical of older state park campgrounds.

The wide, shallow Van Duzen River flows by the campground. It’s pretty shallow and rocky next to the campground, but just a few yards east and west of the campground are deeper, more placid areas. There’s a lot of algae growing in the river and blue-green algae toxins can be a concern.