Driving the narrow and curvy Cal-Barrel Road in California
Cal-Barrel Road is a very narrow unpaved road located in Humboldt County, in the U.S. state of California.
Located within the Redwood National and State Parks, the road running through a tunnel of trees is narrow and steep. It’s a beautiful scenic road weaving through enormous redwood trees. You can also walk along this road if you'd like. The road is very narrow, so please watch out for other drivers/walkers. At the end of the road there is a tiny trailhead parking area, at 310m (1,017ft) above the sea level.
Starting from the paved Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway, the road is 3.05 km (1.9 miles) long only. Over this distance the elevation gain is 245 meters. The average gradient is 8.03%. The road is open to cars in summer only. It’s one of the most scenic drives in the Redwood National and State Parks.
The road, with occasional car traffic, is so narrow that motorhomes/RVs and trailers are prohibited. This winding road offers extraordinary opportunities to experience colossal old-growth coast redwoods by car. It is definitely worth to make few stops and have a walk in the forest. The road winds slowly through the redwoods and dead-ends at a trailhead parking area which is a great lunch stop. You can drive as slowly as you like, and you can get a feeling for what driving through the redwoods must have been like before the roads were paved.