I got up on Tuesday all set to go for a walk on the beach - even got out to the beach. I'm okay with rainy; I'm even okay with headwind. But when it's blowing gale force winds in my face... I say, this is pointless. I even had a target for where on the beach I was going to walk to, and quit about 100 yards away. Yeech.
From that, I mostly had to drive. I was about 2 hours from the California, so that happened quickly enough. I got into crescent City and went to the visitor center. The guy was very helpful and sent me off to some good, easy-to-access places. There was no one else around - it was still pretty drizzly. Bless the rain gear.
As I got into the redwood forest, at first I'm thinking, yeah, what's the big deal? We have trees like this. Then I came around the corner and I see this REALLY BIG trees. Ohhhh, I get it. That's not just trees - thems TREES. You can't really explain it to anyone who hasn't seen a redwood. A picture doesn't do it justice because the scale is all wrong. Yes, you can put a human in the picture, but then all you can really see is that the human is very small in comparison to the tree trunk. It is really impossible to explain just how large the trees are.
After hanging out in the forest a bit, I continued driving down until I got to Arcata and got a hotel. I figured out I could stay here Wednesday night as well... but also that I could go to San Francisco on Thursday and see some friends. Oooh!
This morning I went back up in the redwoods and did a relatively short hike (3 miles) from one of the visitor centers. I went through the Cathedral Trees and then past the Big Tree. The Big Tree is 22' in diameter. The guy at the Crescent City Visitor Center said that was about as big as the room we were in. It's just massive.
I came back and went into Arcata proper. Arcata is where Humboldt State University is, so it's mostly a college town. It's a pretty left-of-center place, very hippy. Lots of all-natural, vegetarian, vegan, eco-friendly, etc., etc... I walked around the downtown and had a slice of pizza. It's all good.
As it happens, Arcata is also where my "mead supplier" lives. (My friend Ken went to Humboldt, and when I talked to him today, he said, "And if you'd said 'weed supplier', that would have worked too.") Heidrun Meadery makes sparkling mead, which I had at my wedding and buy periodically. Gordon, the meadmaker, just got back in town this evening. So, I'll be visiting him tomorrow morning, and then heading to SF. En route, there's still more big trees to visit, and Ken insists that I stop at a couple of wineries en route.
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