So today we went and
visited with the redwoods. We took hundreds of photos - and none of them give
any sense just how goddamn big the trees are, and how lovely it is underneath
them. The weather was drizzly, but not too bad, and the trees dripped, and the ground
was green and soft, and there was no-one else there at all. It was just magic.
Here is a typical shot of me trying to give a sense of scale. Doesn't really
work!
We drove down the Avenue of
the Giants in Humboldt State Park (or most of it, it was closed in one point
with a tree down across the road) and stopped to do some walks into groves and
also at the very informative visitors centre. It was a bit damp and miserable
to do any longer hikes, but we felt we got a pretty good sense of it. It only takes
a few hundred metres in from the road and you feel completely in the forest,
especially when there is no-one else around. It's very silent. Here's a picture
of where one of the trees had fallen over - landed on another tree already on
the ground (at the far left of the picture) so split under its own weight.
Perfectly normal thing for
a tree to do, but check out the scale! (Scale point is one Australian man
approximately five feet ten inches tall).
Later in the day the
weather crapped out so we went back into Eureka which was a very pleasant
surprise - lots more cool Victorian buildings and a historical area with many
excellent second hand bookshops. We were glad we went up there - it hadn't
registered on any of the tourist guides but well worth a stop.
In the evening it was back
to wine and cheese in Victorian splendour (fellow guests tonight included a
woman from MY HOME TOWN IN NZ, honestly what is the point of travelling) and
deciding what to do the next day, which was one of the days we'd left free
without booking any accommodation or anything. The weather was supposed to be
bad again ... more trees? wine tasting in the Napa valley? explore some scenery
on minor roads? do a big drive to Sacramento? After a bit of pondering we
realised that actually we wanted to do more shopping, and booked a hotel in
Fairfield for more mall and outlet trawling. We can drink wine any time ... and
we do.
On the way down to
Fairfield we stopped at the drive-through redwood tree at Leggett. It was
bucketing down rain but we got the obligatory photos. Did we drive our car
through the tree? No, we did not. It was a rental car. We looked at the size of
the hole, and the size of the car, and thought about it ... and decided not to.
We walked through instead.
Our drive took us through the Napa Valley which was extremely beautiful, even in the rain. Clearly a lot of money around, but it was pretty busy even on a rainy Friday in January so we were happy with our decision not to stop. And of course it was the Presidential inauguration. We had wondered if it would register at all, but it didn't. Nobody mentioned it or seemed to notice. I think the general mood in California was summed up by the local paper in Eureka.
So on a very USA day -
presidential inauguration? such ceremony? seems strange to me, a big fuss for a politician - we ended on the most USA note we could. By having a
burger and a beer, in a mall, in front of Macy's. It was awesome.
The trees are just awesome.
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