Miranda Gardens Resort

Almost everybody drives the Avenue in an afternoon and sleeps somewhere else. Miranda Gardens is the argument for not doing that: a cottage with a kitchen and a balcony in the small hamlet of Miranda, with the redwoods simply there — close enough that the light in the room goes green in the afternoon.

These are proper little houses rather than a campsite with a roof: room to cook, room to spread out, and a garden between them with space for children to disappear into. Ask for one of the cottages set back from the road.

Two minutes' walk up the Avenue is the market. Buy a slice of apple pie, take it back, and eat it on the balcony looking up. That is the evening, and it is better than it sounds.

Worth knowing: these are coast redwoods, the tallest trees on earth — not the giant sequoias of the Sierra Nevada, which are bulkier and three hundred miles away. People conflate them constantly. Walk the Founders Grove or Rockefeller Forest early, before the coaches, and the difference stops being academic.

For years the only way to book was to telephone. There is a website now, but it still runs like a place that expects a phone call, so ring if the dates you want look unavailable online.