Well, here I am back to my blogging. I have been retired for a few years but you just can't keep a good barista on the shelf forever. Of course if I get off my shelf and close to the floor that wretched plastic eating dog will make my life miserable, so sometimes shelves are a really good thing. Don't let the angel wings fool you, she's just jealous because she never gets to go anyplace except the vet's office.
We got packed up and on the road under cloudy skies that got sunny 20 miles south of Olympia and stayed that way for the entire trip--until we headed home. Bingo. 20 miles out, the clouds came back and they've been back for a week. The top was dropped on the convertible as soon as we saw the sun and it stayed down for 80 degree days and sunshine all weekend long, even at the beach on Sunday, amazing.
Me on the hood celebrating the sunshine!
Medford and Ashland and Jacksonville are pretty much in the middle of nowhere. No big towns for a lot of miles, but so much to see and do. Last time I was here we went kayaking on the Rogue River and then to the Spam Festival. Good Times.
This time we hopped in Mini the with Rabbit's friend Pam and Pam's friend Pink Floyd, and headed down some crazy two-lane black top to the Redwoods, Highway 199. I'm not sure I'm fond of any road that is nicknamed "The Narrows". The Narrows could be named Carsick Alley real fast, stiff corners, blind corners, curves, yuck. Fun on a motorcycle as long as you don't come face to face with a moron in a motorhome. We stopped for lunch at the DQ in Cave Junction, I think that is an interesting town, perhaps a lot of dogs live there who eat baristas there after dark. And by the way, since when is Gasquet pronounced Gas-keet? I mean seriously folks, that has got to be some old French pioneer exploding. "Sacre bleu! I blow a gasquet if you feed me venison even one more time!" Yes, we went through a hamlet called Gas Keet.
Nice to travel with locals as our guides because they know every inch and shortcut of this area. Rumor has it that Pam used to skinny dip in these rivers back in the day. I don't think any of us could make the climb down anymore, Every single one is a long, long haul down kids.
I digress, school has started and that cut the beachbound traffic to nothing on a weekend day, apparently a rarity. We crossed the Illinois river and into California, meeting the vegetable police when we crossed into California. I wonder what you have to do wrong to get that job? "Any vegetables or fruits?" Hey, its California, what do you expect?
We took a well-maintained wide dirt road into the back door of the Jedediah Smith Redwood preserve. Empty, well mostly empty compared to the crush of people rampaging around in the groves strung along 101. We entered the park and hopped out to take a picture of the first of the giants. That's when I got a good look at Floyd for the first time.
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| Pink Floyd in the Redwoods |
Floyd is really cute, he's such a total American tourist though! Right down to the sunglasses shorts and camera, I mean really. But then again, a pink flamingo can't exactly blend in with the woodwork can he? Except when the woodwork is the Redwoods...
We were all rather amused to come upon the Stout Grove of Redwoods. Mrs. Stout gave the Stout grove of stout trees as a preserve in honor of her husband, Mr. Josiah Stout, whose job in life was to cut down said trees, lumber baron par excellence. Irony at its very finest.
Here's Floyd at the start of the Stout Grove trail.
We chose the loop trail although trails lead every which way but loose
through the forest. There was even a campground that you could hike in to, but I'll tell you what, the mosquitoes were big enough to carry off the mini cooper! You have to bathe in DDT to camp there I'm thinking, or carry a machete to fend them off.
Such a beautiful place though, like a giant church made of trees with sun slanting in from the side. Even the downed trees were impressive. Like Pam said, you don't need to go on a diet to look small, just stand next to a Redwood!
Here I am contemplating which way to go. There were surprisingly few people in the woods, and the strangest was this Austrian lady in full on Austrian dirndl rig out with her posse of Ameican teenagers.
We wandered on through the forest and hoped they found Hansel and Gretel. We had bigger fish to photograph. Including these peculiar burls, knots in the trees that stick out like something a troll would sculpt. Wood workers apparently love to take these burls and make things out of them so I'm glad this grove is protected from being ruined by cutting, it would be sad to miss all these amazing trees no matter how many picnic tables and salad bowls you could get from them! Check out this burl, it looks like the profile of a conquistador. Weird eh?
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conquistador head
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Here's Pam with her diet Redwood. You can get an idea of scale with a human in the picture.
These trees are as impressive down as up!
And they really do look and feel like a church...
That's a human being in the middle, little tiny wayyy off in the middle distance.
We came around a corner on the trail and were flabbergasted to find a log carved with Pink Floyd's NAME. How cosmic, how karmagedon is that?
And here I am below tying myself in knots. hee hee.
We did take some time to just kick back and take it all in before we headed off to the ocean. What an amazing experience.
I think that's enough of my journey for now don't you? Next up, the beach baby!
