Northern California - August 14, 2017




Monday morning, we started our long drive up to Orick to see the redwoods. We had so much stuff between our luggage and the enormous grocery shopping trip the Gina and I did the day before (in addition to the Asian mall) that there was no way we could only take one car. So we got on the road a little before 8 and caravaned to this place:

where Gina wanted to have breakfast. Noah tried fried oysters - thumbs up. Evie asked if they were trying to make the place look run down on purpose. 

 Next stop was Wolf House, which was Jack London's dream house that spontaneously combusted right before he and his wife Charmian were supposed to move in. The house is also the setting for the beginning of Rick Riordan's second Roman gods series. Visited the ruins of Wolf House and the House of Happy Walls - a museum that told the story of their lives, which were wild with tragedy and drama and romance. 


I think this was supposed to be a meditation pool.

Next we continued up north on 101 up to Leggett, where we went to the Chandelier Drive-Thru Tree Park, which is super kitschy but one of a kind -- gutting thousand year old redwoods not being the thing anymore. Still, it was interesting, and I guess cars used to be a lot narrower than they are now, because driving through that thing was not easy. 


This is Gina and David in her car.

Then we went on the Avenue of the Giants, a scenic drive that runs parallel to 101. Seeing these massive trees stretching up out of our sight, turning a sunlit day into shadow, was like entering a fairy tale forest. We stopped off to do a quick walk-through Founders Grove, a short loop hike that was gorgeous and, since we saw it at the end of the day, not too crowded and strikingly quiet. We took a lot of pictures there, like these:



Back on the road, Gina and I got off 101 and got gas at Scotia, where we randomly met back up with David and the kids. We ended up stopping for dinner at a place right off 101 - a bar, nothing interesting, and then reached the house in Orick. 

The house was great - a big ranch house with Brady Bunch era decor and lots and lots of common space, three decent sized bedrooms and two pretty good bathrooms. The only issue was that Gina found a mouse in one of the bedrooms. It was a very cute mouse but it was still a mouse. We spent about the next hour and a half trying to catch it. Unbelievably, Gina did catch it in a pot with a splatter cover over it, but as she was walking to the door to let it out, the mouse managed to jump out. It ran into the kitchen and went behind the refrigerator, never to be seen again. I only hope the mouse made it outside. We did call the property manager about it and she was kind of useless, but I guess realistically, what could she have done? At least wasn't a rat. So Evie ended up sleeping on the couch in the living room, Noah took the mouse room, and Gina took the back bedroom. David and I took them master bedroom. We all slept well, without any further rodent incursions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Northern California - August 20, 2017

Image
We had gone back and forth many times trying to plan a time for Judy, Raquel, Michele and me to get together, but getting the details done was tough. In the end, after talking with Gina, we decided to meet in between, leaving out the kids and husbands. In retrospect, given the condition of the Bolinas house and the lack of anything to do there other than tidepooling and the Rt. 1 closure, it's a good thing we didn't decide to meet in Bolinas. We met for brunch on Sunday in Mill Valley, at a place called the Dipsea Cafe, or something like that. It took me almost an hour to get there, over the dreaded Panoramic Highway, but it went by quickly. The beautiful scenery helped.  After a lot of intense catching up over omelettes, we went for a hike close by. And then we went to a Whole Foods type grocery store (Good Earth?) for more coffee, and I bought yet more groceries. It was so great to see my friends! We hadn't all been together for 7 years, when we rent...
Read more

Northern California - August 15, 2017

Image
As is always the case things look better in the morning. We had a lot of fog and it was still really nice and cool. So we spent a leisurely morning getting to know the house better, reassuring ourselves that there were no mouse attacks in the middle of the night and having breakfast. We packed a picnic lunch and set off for our first stop, which was Patrick's Point State Park just south of Orick. It was just passed low tide when we got there so the first thing we did was drive out to the the point and go down a very steep cliff face to the rocky beach far, far, far below to go tide pooling.  We saw starfish and lots of snails and little crabs but the big highlight was sea otters! We saw a family of three playing in the water and on the rocks. They kind of looked like weasels, but the way they played and had fun chasing each other up and down the rocks and into the water was so cute.  David and I went further down the beach, following the otters. While I was watchin...
Read more

Northern California - August 16, 2017

Image
The day before, we had done two pretty decent length hikes, and so I guess Wednesday was come-uppance day. The kids threw gigantic temper tantrums about doing more hiking. It was a warmer day, although still quite cool, so maybe that was part of it.  We drove to Elk Prairie State Park, found the world's best parking spot thanks to Gina, and took the Cathedral Trees Trail. It was a beautiful trail, though there were some open, sunny parts, so perhaps being hot added to the tantrums.The cathedrals start as a cluster of connected trees that sprout from one redwood in the center. Eventually that center redwood dies and leaves  a ring of trees, so closely packed together that they do resemble a structure. Selfie of the short arms We were determined to hike Fern Canyon in the afternoon (considered a must do hike), even though the kids were still being rotten. As a (undeserved) concession, we decided to do the short half-mile loop instead of the longer recommended hike. ...
Read more