Northern California

Monday - We slept quite late and decided to have Tristan's maths lesson before we left our campsite on the banks of the Klamath river. I had set some maths work on Mymaths, a computer maths site that self marks his work and we didn't know when again we would have a Wifi connection. Of course Celso didn't mind - he went fishing with his new lure! We set off around midday to drive down the old highway 101, the new road is a longer two lane each way highway with a 65mph limit whilst the old road is single lane each way road which winds through groves of Redwoods. Our first stop was at an old logging road called the Ah Pah trail. The road was a logging route, last logged in the 1940's, but the road had been pulled up in 1995 as the state park tried to restore a lot of the damaged land. After several attempts trying to prevent erosion after the tarmac surface was removed they left nature to do its bit and now, apart from a few big stumps, it is really hard to see where the old road went. You can see from the photos how tall some of the trees are and how thick the undergrowth is. Our next stop was at a place called 'Big Tree' which was a huge tree that was saved in the early 1900's from a homesteader who wanted to chop it down and make the stump into a dance floor! Next we stopped at an information centre where we learnt the difference between Redwoods and Sequoias. Redwoods grow on the coast and get at least 30% of their moisture from mists, they can grow up 350ft with a girth of around 65ft (diameter 22ft) and live up to around 2000 years. Mostly Redwoods sprout as shoots from damaged trees but will occasionally grow from seeds, they get up to 30% of their water from the coastal fogs. Sequoias live further from the coast (e.g. Yosemite) they can live up to 3200 years, grow to about 250ft and can have a girth of 120ft (diameter 40ft), they grow from seeds after a fire, they can have bark up to 3ft thick! There was also a fascinating piece of wood that was a tree that it is assumed an elk was rubbing to relieve itself of its antlers or antler fur, its antlers got stuck and the elk died, then the tree grew up around the head and the horns so that they now stick out of the trunk, at the back you can see the back end of the skull sticking out!! Finally, we stopped in the town of Eureka to go and get a book for Tristan and to explore birthday presents for him in a big mall. I bought this months National Geographic which amazingly has a story all about the Redwoods in it and the most brilliant picture (a five page pull out) showing the magnificence of one of these trees - exactly as I would love to have been able to show you. You must either go and get a copy or at least go and look at the picture! Then to our current campsite at the Eureka fairgrounds where they hold car racing rallies and rodeo shows, but luckily none of that today! Tuesday -13th It rained and it poured last night. The wind nearly blew us away, I looked on the Internet in the morning and their is a tropical storm in south California that is reeking havoc down there and we are experiencing just the edges (and that is bad enough). The advice was not to drive in high sided vehicles until after 3pm so we set off to watch a film and get the oil in the van changed (we had to do it after 5000 miles and we've done 4800 so we thought that would do!) At 3pm it was definitely much less windy but still raining, however we decided to continue our journey southwards through more of the Redwood groves. Even though it rained on and off we managed to take some fabulous photos of the road winding through the trees and then we stopped to ask some people where we should go to see the best trees as we didn't want to keep on stopping and getting wet! They sent us on the road to Honeydew and told us to stop at the Rockerfeller Grove, they warned that the road was a bit bad but that we'd be ok. We stopped at what is considered to be the tallest tree in the world, we had to cross a swollen river to see it on a fallen log, it was starting to get really dark by then so I don't think the photos do the tree any justice, then we continued on our way to Honeydew. 3 hours later we arrived tense and weary at Garberville ... the road was horrendous, narrow, winding, with hair pin bends and steeply inclined, up and down, with edges that dropped away steeply to the right and then the left. When turning to the right the headlights did not illuminate the right side of the road so I was turning into the unknown, there were no road markings to help and the fog came down around us like a blanket. At one stage there was no tarmac, just gravel which was wet and slippery from the rain! We were excited when we finally hit a 'sane' bit of road and hit 30mph!! I will not be following suggestions from strangers with such confidence in their suggestions in future! We camped next to a DIY store and the heavens opened up again and pelted us with rain that sounded like a pile of pebbles being dropped onto the van... however I slept really well after THAT drive. Wednesday 14th We awoke to more intermittent rain and headed south again, determined today to stay on only major roads. We made only two stops, the first at a house that in 1944 was made out of a single redwood log that was hollowed out by two men over 80 days and fitted with a kitchen, bedroom, dining room and toilet. You can see the photos. The second stop was at a little tourist place that has been open since 1949 called the House of Gravity. It was a small building built on the side of a hill on a angle so that when you go inside you feel all odd. We stopped early at a campsite to sort ourselves out and to have a relaxing afternoon, so here we are at a little place called Lakeside, next to a lake (believe it or not) feeding lots of ducks and Celso tried a spot of fishing (believe it or not)!