Day 207 : Californication and the Land of Giants

High point: Pacific Coast Highway 101

Low Point: Not being able to drive this road everyday

No point: Being anywhere else

What not to say at a border point: California border lady ‘’Do you have any fruit or vegetables on board Sir?’’, James ‘’No, only the three in the back.’’

Risk point: Getting 52 new troops in a game of Risk against Ben Battye.  Surely that only happens once in a lifetime?

Wolf spot: one

Today we hit highway 101 baby!  When you think of the US you can be forgiven for thinking of McDonalds, shopping malls, drive-thrus, plastic fantastics and freeways.  The 101 however is about as close to nature as you can get.  The route is still mostly miles and miles of wild, open and beautiful country that makes you feel incredibly spoilt at having it almost all to yourself.  From the deserted rugged beaches with their white spray hitting the road, to the dense forests of gigantic redwoods reminding you how insignificant you really are in the big scheme of things.

Mingling in amongst this is the small town America we were all looking forward to.  The caravan parks, logging companies, diners and souvenir shops all add up to make this ‘’have a nice day y’all’’ land.  The cute cottages, tin huts and wooden shacks have gardens full of all sorts of weird and wonderful contraptions, artifacts and general pointless bric-a-brac.  Stopping off between the gorgeous coastline and the ‘big’ trees for bottomless cups of coffee and an oversized plate of lemon meringue pie made our taste of Highway 101 complete.  The best thing about these towns is that the journalists find us. Making a quick lunch stop a lovely reporter from the Curry County Reporter came and interviewed us for the local paper!

The day was topped off by a drive through the ‘Avenue of the Giants’ with legend Ben Battye at the wheel.There’s big trees and then there’s really BIG trees.  California’s magnificent coast Redwoods can grow more than 320 feet high (about as tall as a 30-storey building), with trunks more than 24 feet in diameter and can live for more than 2,000 years.  The avenue consists of 30 miles of Redwoods and Jurassic Park and Return of the Jedi were both filmed here. It was light when we went into the woods but it soon got dark as the sun went down… we’ve all seen the films, everyone knows you never stop in the woods, especially not in a dark, dark wood full of trees that make you feel like they’re watching you. We were in a magical world somewhere between a horror movie, an arcade game and a fairy tale.  Sure the trees were closing in behind us we were all relieved when we finally we stopped in Garberville, boy this town is friendly.

Road trip?  I think so!

Amy

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