This was an unplanned stop on my Brother / Best Friend Ryan and I's recent visit to the Avenue of the Giants Redwood Groves in Northern California.
It was getting close to 5pm that day, and Ryan and I had been hiking through the Redwood Groves for nearly the entire day. It was our last full day in Northern CA, so I wanted to pick up a few postcards and magnets at a gift shop somewhere. It turned out that the gift shop next to the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree was the closest gift shop to us at the time.
You can visit the gift shop without paying the entry fee for the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree, since the gift shop is located outside the entrance. This gift shop is a good stop for some basic souvenirs. Some of the stuff in there is way overpriced, but that is the case at a lot of gift shops, and I got out of there for around $80, about $30 of which was for a really cool little business card holder that was made of wood from the California Redwoods. I'd wanted something that was made of redwood. The gift shop saleslady was super nice and friendly, and chatted with Ryan and I quite a bit. She was trying to convince us to pay the money for the entry fee for the Shrine Drive-Thru tree, but both Ryan and I felt unconvinced that it would be worth the entry fee, so we both just got really quiet all 3 times that she attempted to talk us into paying the entry fee.
Finally she just gave Ryan and I a piece of paper that allowed us walk-in entry into the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree area for free. I don't know if that was because she liked us, because we seemed uninterested in paying for this attraction, because I spent around $80 in the gift shop and the entry fee is fairly small in comparison, or what, but this wasn't something that Ryan and I had asked for or expected.
For free, it was worth exploring. For the entry fee that we didn't end up paying, I feel like Ryan and I had the right idea to initially choose to pass on this. There isn't much there. The piece of paper was for a walk-in entry, not a drive-in entry, which was good since Ryan's good old GMC SUV has over 300,000 miles on it now (our recent road trip in it will be its last road trip), and it is also somewhat large in size, and we really wouldn't want to risk trying to squeeze it through a fairly tight spot in the bottom of the tree.
We walked through the tree when there were no cars going through it, and it was kind of cool to look up and around while standing under the tree.
The tree houses with carvings in them, near the drive-thru tree, were adorable - I walked into one and Ryan took a photo of me inside of it. It's a unique photo op.
However, it took us all of about 15 minutes to explore everything inside this small area. It was worth our time, but I don't think it would've been worth the entry fee. However, to each their own - some of the people who had chosen to pay the Drive-Thru entry fee while we were there seemed to be pretty happy with their experience, so this might be some people's cup of tea. It's a unique experience, but seems a bit over-hyped.
Lukewarm about this experience, rounding up from 3.5 stars to 4 stars, mostly because of the tree houses.
Ryan's exuberance in the photo that I took of him in front of the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree (posted with this review) is a reflection of his natural enthusiasm as a human, not really a reflection of how either of us felt about the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree.
Tip: If you choose to drive through this tree, you can only drive through one time. Based on what Ryan and I observed in our short time there, the hole in the tree is so small that, depending on the size of your car, you may not be able to open your car doors once your car is inside of the tree. This means that once you are in there, a member of your group may or may not be able to get out of the car and take a photo of your car inside of the tree. So, if you really want a photo of your car inside of the tree, I recommend one member of your party getting out of the car and walking through the Shrine Drive-Thru Tree ahead of your car, standing on the grass near the road next to the exit point, and taking a photo of your car driving through the tree. One couple asked Ryan and I if we had taken any photos of their car in the tree, and when we said sorry but we didn't, they seemed disappointed that they weren't able to get any pictures of their car inside of the tree. read more