Staggering (almost literally) into Eureka that Monday night saved our nerves. Oddly, we usually have one day like this on a road trip in which anxiety creeps up to a certain level (because we don’t know where we are and the directions we thought we had proved unreliable) and tension rises. We get through it and afterward it’s as if we’ve purged all the bad joss that might otherwise infect the balance of the trip. Such was our drive over the mountains from Platina to Eureka.
Picking a hotel because of a chain restaurant might also seem arbitrary, but part of the fun of these is to be arbitrary. Besides, our memory of that first encounter with Marie Callender back in 2001 has remained vivid. (Of course, we were also then pretty strained from the road, so…)
(That first dinner we were served a very fine Oregon wine, Bridgeview, which plays into this trip later on. It was a surprisingly good wine for a chain.)
The room was nice enough that we considered spending another night there and using it as base from which to do exploring. Unfortunately it was already booked, so we packed up and headed north.
One of the things fascinating about this part of the country is what I call micro-climates. Eureka is right on the coast and from the time we arrived to when we finally left it was encased in a heavy mist. Three or four blocks inland and the sun blazed, the sky was cloudless, and the temperature went up noticeably. We drove through these variations for the rest of the trip up the coast.
We turned off onto a beach, which, though public, possessed an air of isolation. A few people already there huddled some distance from where we walked, and a single runner came by.
Moving on, we eventually turned into one of the wildlife centers to get some directions for actually getting into the redwoods, which we seemed to be driving by but weren’t actually passing through.
Obtaining a map and some directions, looking over the exhibits, and stretching our legs, we were ready to go look at the Giants we’d come to see.
Back in 2001, we had a number of goals, one of which was to hit the coast and see the redwoods. Well, right off that’s kind of a misrepresentation—which The Redwoods? They’re strung all along the coast in a number of preserves and national and state parks. The one we chose was the Lady Bird Johnson National Forest, which offers a one mile trail in the midst of some spectacular woodland. As a sample…
More later.