I took advantage of the free redwood days last year and visited a bunch of state parks, and there's definitely a long list of hidden gems. Most just have the $1

I took advantage of the free redwood days last year and visited a bunch of state parks, and there's definitely a long list of hidden gems. Most just have the $10 parking fee and picnic tables are readily available. The interesting observation is that choosing one of these parks consists of just going through a boring large list of parks in a boring old gov website and picking one at random. Whereas going to, say, Yosemite and finding sightseeing places largely involves going to google and/or local tourism guides and funnel the same way as everyone else (resulting in, as one might expect, arriving at spots crowded w/ tourists)