Samantha: From Grant's Pass, we loaded Sara's long-anticipated canoe back onto the car, and shot down to California. Upon reaching the border, we lost our minds with excitement, leaped out the car and danced around the Welcome sign. A passing vehicle honked and waved - I guess we were a little obviously from elsewhere. We met up with Sara later in Crescent City, where she works as an RN at Pelican Bay (it's a huge max. security prison). I was very excited to continue the family theme of this trip, and get to know yet another sister. After Thai food, we hurried down to the beach for the sunset, metallic shine of the withdrawing waves, with interjections of rock so characteristic of the Pacific ocean. From there, to Sara's apartment, a few drinks, the Daily Show, and bedtime. The next day, hiking through the redwoods of northern California. I recently had a dream about camping in such a forest, I looked up at the canopy, half a mile high, and down to the dense clusters of unimaginably ancient and unmovable trunks. The astounding magnitudes in that dream accurately capture the scale of wonder I had upon entering the actual forest. The trees weren't half a mile high, but their trunks certainly were unmovable and ancient. I felt just the right size - itty bitty.
Afterwards, we went to a yummy seafood place, and while we waited for a table, we watched seals, sea lions, and otters just hang around the docks next door. The sea lions found everything worth yelling about. At one point, a male heaved himself onto one end of the dock, causing the whole bunch of sea lions on said to dock to shift unwillingly, and therefore invited a great roar from an unhappy female. She seriously got in his face about it. Us humans pushed our luck and got as close as we could for pictures. They roared about that too. The seals were blue and speckled and didn't make such a fuss. When we got too close, they quietly dismissed themselves to the sea. Lunch was a great, fresh fried fish on thick bread and housemade tartar sauce, really delicious. From there, we said our goodbyes, and Rain and I continued south down the coast on Route 1.
Hours of driving left us with dire need of a nice place to lay our heads. Rain found out about this little campground in Redway, CA called Dean Creek. Here's our TripAdvisor review of it:
We rolled into Dean Creek around 8 pm on a Wednesday night after 6 hours of driving, with no prior research into the resort. Linda, the very sweet woman working the front desk (she and her husband maintain all aspects of the resort while the owner is away) saw that we were too road weary to sleep on the ground, and too broke to sleep in a motel room, and so very graciously offered us a sleeper cabin, at a slightly reduced price to aid our financial situation. Linda was fantastic - super friendly, kind, and very knowledgeable of the attractions around the region. The little camp store in which we met her was stocked with frozen and dry goods, a decent variety of beers, maps and brochures that covered southern Oregon and northern Cali., and the odd traveler's miscellany. She told us that she and her husband are responsible for hauling all the goods to the store from the nearest town once per week. The parts of the resort we visited were clean and well cared for. The hot tub fits 14 people, and was clean when we used it. The ladies' washroom was average, with the addition of a keypad-lock security system (be sure to ask for the combo when you check-in). The cabin we stayed in was brand new, very clean, furnished with two sets of bunk beds, cable TV, mini fridge and microwave, small table/desk, and a set of drawers. It had a nice porch, a picnic table, a grill and a fire ring, and a spigot (don't drink, just wash).
Yes, and so we made a lovely dinner from the fresh veggies Hannah gave us in Eugene, spoiled our brains with a Roast of Rosanne, and fell comfortably and quickly asleep. The next morn, we continued down route 1 with San Francisco in our sites. At one point along the way, specifically around Abalone Point, I needed to pull over. I'd become inexplicably and unreasonably giddy, and needed to get out of the car, peer over the ledge at the sea, inhale all the air, touch everything, spin around in circles. Rain took over the driving, and I leaned out the window, giggling, with my hands immersed in the coastline fog. The energy there, for whatever reason, knocked me off my feet.
We arrived soon thereafter at the one log home. The one log home is, simply, a single huge red wood log, at least 2000 years old, hollowed out with all the amenities of a house, including a full kitchen. It was created in 1946 and toured around the US for a spell. Here's the link for more: http://www.oneloghouse.com/
Then we drove through Chandelier Tree. It felt wrong, but looked pretty cool. We met a guy there from Southern CA, named Nathan, who was touring around on his motorcycle, making a similar post-grad trip. He emphasized our plans to go to Big Sur. Another theme of this trip has been meeting fantastically friendly people most everywhere we go. Also, we say Paul Bunyon on the side of the road. The following pictures are not in chronological order, but it's late and I'm too tired to move them around. Nevertheless, enjoy:
Rain: We finally got to California!!! Now there's nothing wrong with Oregon, but we had been kicking around there so long that I was most certainly ready to get some new ground under my feet. Also, California has that whole iconic, road-trippy aura around it and I didn't feel as though I could really be at ease until we had crossed over its borders. The previous three (ish?) weeks had been filled with a background of anticipation just waiting for that moment, so when it arrive Samantha and I promptly spazzed out. Actually, the road was so windy that we passed the "Welcome to California" sign by accident at first. I couldn't bear the thought of arriving with so little pomp and circumstance so we pretended we weren't there yet, turned around as quickly as possible, then parked by the sign and did a little dance (one that I believe involved the two of us holding hands and skipping through the sign, or something silly like that). And then we were there! And it was good. The mountains were beautiful, the trees were wonderful, and the air just seemed to have a certain special quality (yes, I am aware that given air-flow patterns and whatnot, it is highly unlikely that there was a statistically significant difference between the air there and, say, 5 miles north of it). We got to Samantha's sister's town right at the perfect time to go down and dip our toes in the ocean while watching the magnificent sunset (I said hi to her for you, Nicole).
We had nothing to do the next day but drive some more, so we had a leisurely time hanging out more with Sara in the forest and by the ocean. The coast right there was very flat, windy, and cloudy and it reminded me a lot of Denmark. I had a funny moment where right as I remarked that sentiment to Samantha, and German family walked by us conversing and I had to to a double take to make sure that I was still in the U.S. I got to see both Sea Lions and Seals up close in the wild for the first time, and that was pretty cool.
As for the Redwoods... well. It was basically like this: you walk into a forest and see a huge tree, like one you couldn't get close to wrapping yourself around if you tried, and think "huh, that's a really big tree". Then you walk a bit further and see a tree that puts that first tree to shame, and then every tree you see after that seems impossible bigger than the one before. Like, you might see one of the trees from afar and you can't tell much about the size because everything around it is just as massive. But then you get a picture taken of you standing in front of the tree and you take up such an itsy-bitsy tiny little percentage of the picture that it's just silly, really. But long story short, the trees were breathtaking. A lot of them grow so fast that they start to be somewhat hollow in the middle at the bottom, so when they fall over there are these great big holes in the trunk. During our second day of driving down the coast we stopped at something call the Chandelier Tree, which is basically a giant redwood that is about 400 years older than Jesus and has managed to survive having a car-sized and shaped whole cut out of the bottom of it. It was like a tiny taste of the Total Perspective Vortex- when that tree had been growing for longer than our country has currently existed, the Roman Republic was still about a century away from becoming the Roman Empire and Judaism was still the only Abrahamic faith. And I drove a car through it. But luckily, instead of the soul-sucking depression that is supposed to follow a trip to the TPV, my main reaction was to think about just how cool nature is, and how there can be things right in front of us that just exist on such an amazingly larger and longer scale than we humans do.
But aside from the whole waxing-poetic thing.... driving down the coast of California was just as lovely as people said it would be. We took an accidental detour and wound up on 101 instead of 1 after a while, but we still made it to San Jose in one piece to see my friend Fatuma and her family.
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