Peaches & Redwoods

Sometimes random events occur which take on a life of their own.  Such an event happened this morning before we even made it to breakfast. Jim was up early so he strolled over to the restaurant next door to get a coffee.  The waitress gave him the coffee in a real cup, didn't charge for it, and, according to Jim, when he arrived in the restaurant asked, "What can I do for you, Peaches?"  Jim was quite pleased with this and told us as we were getting ready to go back to the restaurant. 

 

We wondered why she had referred to him as Peaches so we asked her.  Her response, "I could have called him something else, but I'm in the service industry."  She was funny and quick witted and at the end of breakfast she received good tips from all of us.  That wasn't the end of it, however.

 

We left Eureka and headed south to the town of Ferndale, CA.  Ferndale's industry has disappeared so it has had to reinvent itself as a tourist destination.  It has done this by capitalizing on the Victorian mansions and buildings that lumber barons and companies built here late in the nineteenth century.  It has become a local tourist destination as a result.

 

The main street has a large number of buildings which date from the late 1800s and which remind me of the Hallmark ornaments that my wife buys for her Christmas village each year.  They are painted beautifully but the level of ornamentation must take a tremendous amount of work to maintain.

 

 

The Palace Bar in Ferndale, CA

 

 

The Ivanhoe Hotel is the oldest most westerly hotel in the continental United States.

 

The Rexall Drug Store in Ferndale, WA.

 

In the Palace Bar window & I have no idea what a Cow Pie Bingo is.

 



We stopped on the main street, then visited the Gingerbread Mansion that was built in 1894 and the Shaw House which dates from 1854.  Both are beautiful examples of the architecture of the time and have been turned into B&Bs.  The Shaw House has some trees which probably date to the building of the house, including a huge flowering tree that seems to stretch halfway across the front of the house.

 

 

The Gingerbread Mansion, built in 1894

 

Detail of the Gingerbread Mansion

The entrance to the Gingerbread Mansion

 

 

The Shaw House, built in 1854

 

The huge flowering tree in front of the Shaw House

 

We left Ferndale and headed to the Starbucks in Fortuna for our morning coffee.  After several days on the road I believe that we have made a Starbucks convert out of Jim.  Before the trip he totally dismissed the idea of drinking Starbucks coffee.  He has discovered Blonde Roast now and may never be the same.  We'll have ot make a vow of silence concerning this matter whenever his friend All is around.

 

Our major goal for the day was to ride the Avenue of the Giants, a thirty-one mile ride through some of the largest trees/living things on the face of the planet.  Our ride through these trees gave me a sense of how insignificant we humans are in terms of size and longevity.  Some of these trees must be much more than a thousand years old.  Some were probably growing when the Roman Empire fell more than fifteen hundred years ago.

 

 

Kerry, Garry & Jim in front of an average sized redwood on The Avenue of the Giants.

 

Me, in fornt of a regular-sized redwood tree

 



 

Kerry, Garry & me in the redwood forest.

 

These trees are incredibly tall.

 

These trees are at least 10 metres behind the motorcycles.

 

 

Riding through the giant redwood trees

 

Later on, we came across a tree which had fallen perhaps even before the road was built.  The tree was cut to allow the road to pass through and even twenty or twenty-five metres from the base it is at least three metres across.  When this tree was standing it must have been massive and there is no telling how many hundreds or even thousands of years old it was when it fell.  And one can only imagine how the ground shook when this behemoth hit the ground.

 

I decided to climb onto the tree just to see what it looked lie on the top and to show how large it was. It always amazes me how some people can create beauty, others can appreciate it, and others deface it.  When I climbed to the top of the trunk, I found evidence of the latter.  Someone had taken the trouble to climb onto the log and then defecate on it, leaving a roll of toilet paper behind to evidently mark the spot.  Disgusting and disgraceful are only two of the words I have for the twisted creature who committed this atrocity. 

 

 

Kerry & Garry in front of the fallen redwood.

 

 

Kerry in front of, and me on top of the fallen redwood.

 

 

Another idea of the size of the redwoods.

 

Shamrocks on the forest floor.

 

The ride took us through a large number of redwood groves. It is amazing that these trees exist.  It seems to me that they would have provided an appropriate background for dinosaurs.  My guess is that these types of trees have probably been around since the time of the dinosaurs.

 

 

Probably not a relative of Jim's.



 

Leaving The Avenue of the Giants we rejoined Highway 101 and rode into Garberville where we stopped to gas up and have lunch.  The restaurant was across the street from the Hemp Connection, a store that sells hemp products, although not the one you would expect.  Humboldt County is apparently one of the prime marijuana growing areas in the United States but there is no medical marijuana distributor there.  As the cashier said, the powers that be want to leave distribution as it is and forego the tax dollars that it would generate.

 

 



The restaurant has many pieces by a local artists that seem to be parodies of popular cultural icons including Mickey Mouse and others.  The are somewhat whimsical and funny is you have that type of sense of humour. 

 

 

Lunch in Garberville

 

A takeoff of the famous painting of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart at a diner.

 

Minnie Mouse?

 

Familiar?

 

Leaving Garberville, we headed to Leggett to see the Chandelier Tree that has been famous for ninety years as the tree that people drive their cars through. It was not disappointing and I took photos of the guys riding through the tree, a once in a lifetime experience.

 

 

Kerry in the tree

 

Garry riding through the Chandelier tree.

 

 

Kerry & Garry riding through the Chandelier Redwood

 

 

Jim riding through the tree. Love the doo rag

 

Me riding through the Chandelier tree.

 

The tree itself is massive.  It stands 96 m (315 feet) high, is 21 feet in diameter (70 feet in circumference) and is 2400 years old.  Truly one of the natural wonders of the world.

 





 

On the way out we took a wrong turn and had to retrace our ride back to the road that took us to Fort Bragg. This road rose about 1500 feet to the crest then dropped back down to the Pacific Ocean where it joined Highway 1. The ride was incredible! Even with a heavy bike like a Harley it was fun, but it would have been amazing with my Norton. 

 

We finished the day by riding the thirty-five or so kilometres to Fort Bragg where we got rooms for the night at a good price.  The Guy who checked us in had a great sense of humour and even called Jim the youngest guy.

 

We had dinner at Denny's and as we were recapping the day, we got to talking about the day's events.  The matter of Jim's nickname from the morning came up and we recalled that the night before we arrived in Eureka, we had pie for dessert.  Guess what kind Jim had?