Hi Gram!

Well, we finally made it up to the giant Redwoods! We stayed in Garberville, at the south end of the Avenue of the Giants, which is the name they gave to HWY 254. It’s lined with giant coastal redwoods and a great chance to see the big trees from the car. There are also a lot of opportunities to get out and hike amongst these titans, and plenty of history to learn about along the way. The rain still hadn’t let up when we were there, so we didn’t do any hiking, but stopped a number of times to get out and see the trees up close. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let me start at our arrival in Garberville.

The motel reminded me of what a roadside lodge developer would imagine a Wisconsin hunting lodge would look like if they’d only ever seen a few old photos. We pulled off the road under a carport canopy that extended out from the dimly lit office with a neon “VACANCY” sign overhead and a faint backlit “OPEN” sign in the window. I went in and spoke with a nice guy whom I presume by his accent, attire, and facial features was not a descendant of the early settlers to the area. We agreed upon a price and he gave me a key dangling from the rounded diamond-shaped tag that every motel used back in the 1950’s. We drove over to our room, unlocked the door, and walked into a long ago yesterday. The matted green carpet had blackened traffic patterns showing where decades of visitors had tread. The walls and ceiling were covered with wood paneling that had been darkened yellow by smokers and years of secrets. The light fixtures held dim incandescent bulbs and a layer of dust that would give an archeologist plenty of work, and the comforters on the bed looked like they were still the originals. We turned on the heat, took our showers, and crawled into bed with surprisingly soft sheets for the night.

I woke up around 5:30am with cool air blowing across the bed and feeling chilled to the bone. Hoping the thermostat had been bumped, I got out of bed to turn it back up, only to find it set at 74. Holding my hand to the vent, I confirmed the cold air then went and shut it off. Zibby was still comfortably asleep, and I didn’t want to wake her to the cold, so I took a hot shower and left it running to try to warm up the room while I went through my morning routine. After Zibby stirred, I called the front desk, whose only suggestion was to crank up the thermostat as high as it would go. Knowing how thermostats work, I decided our best bet was to get dressed, pack up, and go get some hot tea. Still a little dazed from the early morning, we walked over to the little coffee stand down the street and placed our order at the window. Zibby and the barista had a friendly chat for a while about trees, Chicago, California, tea, vacations, and warm boots before we realized that we were standing in the drive-thru lane instead of the walk-up window. We had a good laugh, grabbed our drinks, and headed back to the car so we could go see the big trees.

I had heard about a tree so big that you could drive through it, and seen pictures over the years with full-sized cars passing through it. We drove past some tall, tall trees and saw a few signs before one of the signs directed us to turn off the avenue for the chance to see the drive-through tree. Excited, we pulled up to the ticket booth with nobody in there. A sign in the window told us that in the case of nobody there, we could put $8 in the collection box and go ahead. We dropped our money in the box, headed down the driveway, and found disappointment around the corner. I’m sure that a compact car could have passed through the opening in the tree. I imagine that at one point, it was a strong, impressive specimen looming above the driveway. I can only bet that at some point many years ago, this was a tourist destination that had tourists oohing and ahhhing. Today, though, it was a decrepit, rotting little shadow of what it used to be, with a gap so narrow that we decided to walk through instead. Determined and stubborn, I wanted to see if my car would fit so I folded the mirrors in on both sides and had Zibby watch both sides as I inched through. Inch by inch, I was nervous as I looked out both side windows and knew I could touch the wood without extending my arm. I got through and Zibby told me that I had inches to spare on either side and my roof rack only cleared because it was on the right side of the car where the opening was a little higher. Disappointed, we got out of there and kept working our way up the avenue. We stopped by the visitors center, where we saw a cutout of a tree that had stood for over a thousand years. The state had put markers showing the rings when Ghengis Khan was roaming through Asia, the printing press was invented, the United States were founded, and other historical events. Inside, a museum told the story of a guy who could put out a flame, over the radio, with just his voice and had toured the country with a carved out Redwood tree mounted on a truck fashioned as a living space. After he finished his tour, he parked the truck under some trees in his backyard where it sat for years. Some volunteers found it and had it restored to show in the museum for everyone to see. Zibby got a postcard to send to her Grammy, then we got back on the road headed North. The Avenue follows the Eel river, which winds through the forest. When I was here a couple weeks ago, a narrow trickle carved down the center of a gaping silt and gravel bottom. Today, after the rains of the past week, water raged past us bouncing off fallen trees and churning as fast as the terrain would allow. We stopped at a site where a town once stood, which had been swept away by a historic flood in the 1960’s and replaced by over twenty feet of silt and earth. I was awe-struck by the difference in terrain caused by the river and the difference in the height of the water between the week before and today. We turned off the road and headed toward the Rockefeller forest. When John Rockefeller heard about and saw the giant coastal redwoods, he send $1,000,000 to buy a grove and have the great trees preserved. A year later, he sent another $1,000,000.

Today, that grove holds the largest number of the old growth redwoods in the world. The road wound back and forth for a while before we came to a small parking area at a trailhead. We pulled off to check out the trees, careful not to get too far from the car in case it started pouring again. A tree had fallen across the river, and the stump was wider than we are tall. We climbed onto it and gawked at the raging water rushing below it. We would have loved to walk across to the other side, but we agreed that if we fell in the water, it would sweep us away before we even knew what hit us. Standing on that log and looking down at the rushing water was dizzying, and we weren’t brave enough to get too far from land. We got a few pictures, climbed down and checked out some of the other huge trees, then headed back the way we came. We continued north until we reached the end of the Avenue and headed south on the 101. Hungry, we stopped back in Garberville for some lunch and to plan the rest of our day. The cafe we found was a quaint little place, typical of small towns. It was part grocery store, bar, restaurant, tourist shop, and museum. We looked out the windows and listened to a young man at the next table signing up for job corps as we ate our lunch, then gassed up and headed south. We plotted a route back to the coast, and we weren’t off the 101 more than ten minutes when we saw a sign for the REAL drive-through tree that we’d seen in post cards. We detoured over to take a look, but they wanted $10 and I was still mad about wasting $8 on the rotting wannabe, so we decided to skip it and move on. The road wound and weaved up and down, back and forth, and dumped us back on the coast.

There were more awesome trees and rock faces, more crashing waves as we drove south, happily recounting all the cool things we’d seen in the past few days. We pulled into Ft Bragg in the early afternoon, where we’d been told we should stop and see the glass beach. We found the beach on the map and found our way to the shore to see what it’s all about. Glass beach is what happens when the citizens decide to stop dumping garbage and clean up the area. The sea had eroded the land back until the local garbage dump was washing into the ocean. Tons of glass bottles, jars and other debris littered the area while the ocean pounded and tumbled them day after day for years. What’s left is a beach covered not only in sand and broken seashells, but tons of tiny glass pebbles smoothed and rounded by the ocean waters. The area is still eroding, with signs warning that sinkholes may form at any time, high areas may become stranded by rising tides, and overall warnings of “hey dummy, be careful and don’t get hurt or drown or we’re going to have to block off the whole place for your safety”. We collected some pretty glass, then found our way to a seaside motel for the night. As dirty, worn down, and ugly as the place we found the night before had been, tonight’s lodging was equally clean, fresh, updated and wonderful. The office was large and had a staff of friendly people. We headed to our room and were amazed when we walked in to see white trim offsetting earth tone walls, new linens, a digital thermostat controlling a modern heater, and modern tile walls and floors in the bathroom and a glass shower enclosure. We settled in to our warm, inviting room before watching the sunset and burrowing into our comfortable bed for the night.