Cal-i-forn-ia-Here-We-Are

Hello from Garberville, CA! Yes, it's a town!

We got the second-to-last room at the Sherwood Forest Motel... no kidding! :)

Started again at 8:30ish. We had a snack of sorts in the car. Yogurt & granola, cereal bar... don't remember what else. And we drove and drove and drove! Google tells me it was 366 miles. More and more of that beautiful beach. There wasn't a cloud in the sky... until we went over one ridge near the border with California. And then we were going in and out of cloud banks coming in from the ocean. It would be solid gray to our right and bright blue sky inland to our left. During our drive in southern OR we listened to the book of Revelation, just like I did on the way down NY.

We stopped at Gold Beach, OR for lunch at a place called "Port Hole Cafe" that had an ocean view. Just a 1/2 turkey sandwich with a cup of chowder for me. It was so good! A dozen or so miles before California, we stopped at an overlook and I found a trail down to the beach. That was so beautiful! The place got it's name from a huge rock emerging from the small bay. It looked like a whale's head, one that was almost breaching. Going into CA, they stopped everyone for an "agricultural inspection" where you declare what fruit you're carrying. They made us eat our cherries... as we found out later at the Redwoods Visitor Center in Crescent City... they were worried about fruit like that coming in with pesticides or diseases. "Oh, but we wash our fruit..." Oh well.

So we stopped at the visitor's center for a map (and a patch) - they had neat stuff to look at in there... a skull and shoulder blade from a sea lion! - and I flipped through some of the books and found that there was a small aquarium in town! So just around the corner on 101 we stopped again at the Ocean World Aquarium. It was one of those where you walk down stairs into the bay and it is a big, one-room aquarium. I was concerned about the guide we were going to get when we saw the gift shop. It was a wild hodge-podge of whatever you can think of. But our guide was very knowledgeable and friendly. There was a tide pool tank outside, and then we went down and saw their leopard sharks, local fishes, sting rays and sturgeons. Upstairs there was a tank to pet a couple small sharks (one of them loved getting petted) and then outside again to see a couple seals and a 2-year old sea lion who did tricks. Her name was Cora, and I hear she has a Facebook following. :)

Not too far down 101 lay the Redwood National Park. I totally understand why people talk about the "cathedrals" of nature. It was awe-inspiring, driving between rows and rows of these magnificent giants. They walled us in, allowing only slivers of sunbeams onto the road. When we crossed the Klamath River, we turned off for a scenic drive closer to the coast. Boy! did they mean close! Before we found out it was closed off ahead, we drove a few miles on a gravel path on the top of a cliff overlooking the Pacific (with no guardrails!). It was so exhilarating! Even though we had to turn around we enjoyed going up there. Talk about off the beaten track!

That road was supposed to join into the next scenic drive: the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway. Along this route was the "Big Tree": a 287 foot tall redwood, estimated at 1,500 years old. Also, there was a short trail to the "Corkscrew Tree": a tree wrapped all around itself. Both were incredible and rather tall. I'm so glad we came down here! This has been one of the neatest National Parks I've been to.

Sixty miles later, we came to Eureka, CA, where we stopped for dinner. Found an outstanding little family-operated restaurant called Pachanga Mexicana. Had a "fajita salad" with grilled veggies... greens, chopped tomato, cabbage, guacamole, mixed with grilled zucchini, carrots, broccoli and summer squash... all of which was extremely fresh. Even the carrots. You could tell they had cut them themselves. It was a taste treat!

So I wanted to go further to knock off some of tomorrow's drive. By this time it was 8 o'clock and the sun was really going fast. We ended up staying on the road for another hour and a half, driving in the dusk through miles of wilderness (we're now inland for a bit), passing by forests and rivers with the bright full-moon straight ahead.

We were a little worried as we went through. Didn't quite know where the next gas station was and we were down to an eighth of a tank. But we just kept flying along (the speed is 65 along here) until we found a 76 in Garberville. :)

Jp