Monday, July 21, 2014
Monday is our first day in Eureka, whose name is derived
from the ancient Greek word meaning “I found it!”. And find it we did!
After a long, late-night drive from Clearlake to Eureka, it was
a relatively sleepless night at the Red Lion Inn due to our room location right
below what was clearly a circus troop in the room upstairs, complete with
tumblers, trampolines, and elephants. Thus,
Pierce’s first job on Monday morning was to get us moved to the top floor,
which he accomplished with ease (and his southern charm, no doubt).
Then, it was off in search of a hearty breakfast, which we
found at The Chalet Diner just across the street from the hotel. After all, adventuring requires energy! As we dined on delicious though pricey omelets
and pancakes, Heather planned the rest of the day.
Afterwards, we started by walking about in downtown Eureka. Though smaller than we first imagined, it was
a cute little downtown area that offered shops and eateries and “organic
espresso”, and a cool ocean breeze that keep us in long sleeves for the better
part of the morning.
One thing we couldn’t help but notice was the number of
hippies (or, perhaps more accurately, unkempt, tattooed, odiferous vagrants)
all of whom had a pet dog. Largely
harmless, they struck us as post-college west coast dreamer-travelers who never
quite remembered that jobs and income and responsibility were in any way
important to life. Thus they seemed to
have slipped into a sort of a time warp of wandering, hygiene-free living.
Knowing that we needed more information on the coming days
in the woods, we popped into a local bookstore to seek good advice for the
trip. We found the perfect book for our
needs… “Conifer Country: A Natural
History and Hiking Guide to Northern California”. Therein, we found excellent descriptions of
trails, the trees we’d see (critical to the total experience, of course!), and,
for Heather’s sake, a difficulty scale for each hike. This would serve us well in the coming days.
Since the enormous breakfast wasn’t quite enough, we soon
found ourselves in a bagel shop having organic whole wheat bagels and
organically grown coffee (we are not sure the letters G, M, and O are allowed
to be used together in northern California).
Having once again sated our appetites, and having blown through all the
shops in downtown, it seemed to be time to see what we came to see…the Redwood
forests!
Of course, we needed to make sure that we had access to food
for the trip (yes there seems to be a theme), so as we left Eureka on the 101
Northbound, Heather searched and quickly spotted the “Hole in Wall” sandwich
shop in Arcata, CA. Great place,
enormous sandwiches, and, yes, more hippies.
Having yet again sated our appetites (with leftovers for later, of
course) we headed off in search of “gret big o’ trees”.
We started in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, wherein
Heather had spotted a good “moderate difficulty” trail with a good variety of
trees in old growth forests.
Neither of us, of course, had ever been here before. Needless to say, we were both excited. But neither of us was even close to prepared
for what we saw. If you’ve never been to
see these forests, suffice it to say that no one can possibly describe what you
would see. No camera can capture the
magnificence, no artist can paint the splendor, no poet can pen an adequate
metaphor. Within the first minutes of
the hike, we stopped and stood, silent and upward looking, awestruck, for what
seemed like an eternity. Every step of
the next three hours, every glance left or right, up or behind, yielded another
view of what I can only describe as one of God’s true masterworks.
Of course, I tried in vain to capture what I could with my
minimal camera skills. It is almost
laughable to try to cram 2500 years of natural history into the space of a
camera lens. There’s just too much
there.
In truth, the camera kept us moving slowly ahead rather than
rushing through such an incredible and irreplaceable experience. While I tried to get just the right shot, Heather
would patiently take in all that God had placed before us. We took hours in the woods. Stunningly, even at what should have been the
height of tourist season, we encountered only three pairs of people during a
three hour hike. It was as if we had the
entire forest to ourselves. Not even the
birds disturbed the perfect peace of this eternal place.
After this, we finally returned to the car where we inhaled
the remainder of our Hole In The Wall sandwiches. We then decided to leave the Redwoods for the
day, given the time and the mental sapping that the previous hike had
inflicted. But we weren’t done
sightseeing, it seemed. On our way out
of the park, we encountered a small herd of elk grazing by the side of the
road. After Heather restrained me from
trying to pet one of the large bulls (something about rutting season and being
trampled to death, blah blah blah), we sat in the car as the posed for us.
We headed south, wanting to see the little town of Arcata
where we’d bought the day’s sandwiches.
Alas, the businesses shut down at 6p, so everything was closed. We were both hungry from the day’s exertion,
and settled on a meal of take-out sushi and some of our own wine in the room.
Sleep was much easier without the clowns upstairs, and we
rested well in preparation for the next day’s adventure.
