day 194
amongst the redwoods

"Oh Aimee, you're the Jennifer Gray to my Patrick Swayze." -k.
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The Great Weird North:
Location: Highway 101
Theme: Giant Trees
Attractions: Many
Exploitation of Nature's Wonders: Frequent

Claim to Fame: The 40s are alive and well and living in Northern California. Ahhh, it must have been great back in the day when no one had even thought of the words "environmental consequences" in the same sentence.

False Advertising of the Day

In my day, we never had any of these "big redwood treeees"... we had a whole bunch of little trees. Why, we'd cut and cut and cut, and after 18 hours, which was a normal work day back then, the truck would still only be half full! And we liked it!
The End Is In Sight!
Six days to go!

Trees Company
March 8 - And just when we were saying they didn't make drive through trees anymore. This one must have survived the ol' EPA sweep.

This is the Chandelier Tree, near Leggett, California. Don't ask where Leggett is; I'm not sure if it's even big enough for Mapquest. But yes, they have one of the few surviving environmental maltreat-- I mean, ecological disast-- um, er, natural wonders from back in the day when you could do that sort of thing.

It's really quite remarkable. Never mind that the trees took 1800 years to grow, wouldn't it be cool if we chopped a hole in it, big enough for a car? We could sell tickets.

Never mind that Stephen Hawking is a brilliant gentleman, but wouldn't it be awesome if we could dress him up in a tutu and make his little pretend voice box do celebrity impersonations? We could sell tickets.

Sigh. No respect, I tell ya. Well, nevertheless, some of these stops are kinda cool. They aren't all holes in trees, which proves that you don't need to rape the land to gain profit, but it helps.

The Tree House...
Is it a house? Is it a tree? At the very least, it's a gift shop. The inside of the tree is hollow, and an innovative miner propped a door on the front and presumably lived there for a spell. It has everything a tourist trap needs: chainsaw art, twig pencils, a penny squashing machine, and the words "As seen in Ripley's Believe It Or Not!"

The Gravity House at Confusion Hill...
Now, this was interesting. The house is build on a slant (to say nothing of the "magnetic lines of force" passing through the region) causes instant vertigo as you step through the door. Your eyes say "straight!" but your ears say "lean!" There's a few optical illusions (Who's Taller? Who's Taller Now?) but the house itself is cool enough.

Land of the Bigfoot...
Well well, looks like we may have some wildlife hunting to do in the next few days. As it turns out, trees aren't the only things that are big around here. The redwood forests in Northern California and Oregon are home to the elusive sasquatch. Now, is it just me, or does this one look like Sammy Davis Jr?

Paul Bunyan, and The Trees Of Mystery...
Speaking of big feet, how is it that we keep running into this guy? I guess it takes a big man to cut down these big trees. They say that with one swing of his mighty axe, an entire forest of trees over a millennium old were felled to the ground, to make room for a WalMart. You'll find more stories on Day 51, the first time we met him and his Babe.

And then there's Cape Mendocino, the opposite of all of the above. No signs, no billboards, no roads built for the comfort of a senior citizen in an RV. You have to want to find it, and when you get there, there's a single plaque to say you've found it, like you've just shared a private joke with the country.


And that joke goes something like this: "Hey. Pssst! See all those bozos shelling out three bucks for a hollowed out tree? Well, guess what? They missed this. Yup. But you didn't, and it's beautiful, right? Now, don't you go tellin' nobody."

Oops. Well, you know we can't keep anything from you. Let's just hope the country forgives us. I think it will. After all, we've been together a long time.


best western...

The Westernmost Town In The
United States

The Westernmost Plaque In The
United States

The Westernmost Mailbox In The
United States

The Westernmost Cow In The
United States
more photos in the archive...

Current Location
(get out your push pins)

Highway 101

Next Stop: Crater Lake, OR

see the full map...

Today's Weather:
Neither Here Nor There

Daily Stats
Distance:437.3km
Gas:$15.00

Admissions of Guilt...
Drive Thru Tree:$3.00
Tree House:Free!
Confusion Hill:$5.00
Western Point:Time
Mystery Trees:Closed

Sleeping Quarters
Panther Flat

Site 3. We could see the bathrooms from our site, but couldn't see what was on the ground in the way of the bathrooms. Keep those feet up high!

Cost: $8.00

Bkfast: 
Campground
Westland Union S.P.
Kevin:Apple Oatmeal
Aimee:Coffee
Michael:Honey Nut Oatmeal, Coffee
Lunch: 
Restaurant Matias
Ferndale, CA
K's Order:Beef and Pepper Fajitas
A's Order:Bean & Rice Burrito, Green Chile
Cost:$16.32


© 2002. Kevin Beimers and Aimee Lingman. How The West Was Fun.