May 19, 2018

ALONG THE AVENUE OF THE GIANTS IN REDCREST, CA

Carol writes:  Our next “home” on the California coast was at Ancient Redwoods RV Park, a sunny, open camp surrounded by some very tall trees.


We discovered that we had not tired of hikes in the Northern California redwood forests.  We continued to maintain that a walk among these ancient giants, some of which were 1000-2000 years old, was a magical, breath-taking experience filled with “silence and awe,” as John Steinbeck so aptly stated.  


If it wasn’t for the efforts of the State of California and a small band of farsighted preservationists, these priceless specimens of Nature would have disappeared off the face of the Earth over a century ago when California’s early settlers began to chop the redwoods down in their zeal to clear acreage for ranching and farming. 

Our most rewarding hikes were in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, just down the road on the Avenue of the Giants.  This state park claimed to have the largest remaining old-growth (never logged) forest in the world.


My camera did not survive my recent fall on the trail; however, a new Lumix offered various  photographic techniques that made picture-taking a whole lot more fun… like this “stitched together” landscape feature that enabled me to get the entire height of the 359-ft Tall Tree in a single photo!




























Although our campground named their very own redwood Immortal Tree,


we discovered that redwoods really did have a finite life cycle which inevitably culminated in toppling to Earth, chiefly due to high winds, fire or unusual flood events.


We learned that redwood roots are shallow (only 6-12 feet deep) and there is no taproot, but their roots extend outward over several hundred feet and often link up with neighboring trees, thus giving them additional stability.  As expected, sometimes the crash of a toppled tree can be quite violent.


Then, in the never-ending cycle of Nature, fallen trees serve as excellent “nurse logs” on which fallen needles collect and compost, eventually forming a very thin layer of soil.  As such, a thriving environment has been born for ferns and redwood sorrel, the predominant ground cover of the forest.


On one of our trails, a fallen redwood spanned a creek and provided the only means of crossing the water without getting wet.


Al seemed to be a lot more surefooted on that giant log than I was…


Across the creek at Giant Tree


we witnessed a surprise marriage proposal from a guy with a dog to a girl carrying a parrot and its cage on her back!  


By some stroke of luck, I felt I captured “the exact moment” perfectly.  I emailed the photo to the future bride’s mother, who in turn was most grateful and called me her “trail angel”…

For three days we took hikes in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.  We repeatedly stretched our necks to look up, but also spent a fair amount of time looking down in the search for one of those elusive giant banana slugs we had read about.  Finally, we were rewarded when a little girl and her family shared their discovery with us.
















Flowers, such as red clintonia
















and gently scalloped vanilla leaf ground cover


looked unexpectedly tropical. 

Graceful trillium 


and fungal growth (?) on decaying logs had a beauty of their own.


We didn’t spend our entire two-week stay wandering around in the forest but also took time to check out Eureka, a quaint Victorian seaport town just up the coast.  The old-town retail businesses of Eureka oozed Victorian charm.


The 1889 Carson House, otherwise known as the Pink Lady, was the crown jewel of Victorian elegance.  This home was built by lumbar baron William Carson as a wedding gift for his son Milton.


Across the street was another Victorian beauty—the brooding Victorian Ingomar Club—so exclusive that we couldn’t even go inside for a tiny little peek…























Neighboring homes were certainly up to private club standards.



On another day’s excursion we took in tiny Ferndale, 


which has the distinction of being a set location for the 1995 movie thriller Outbreak.  On the day of our visit, the streets of Ferndale showed none of the panic of a cataclysmic outbreak of an Ebola-like virus as portrayed in the movie.


The beach on the outskirts of Ferndale had some of the finest examples of beach pebbles that I have come across.  


My newly repotted cactus “houseplants” have acquired some pretty snazzy beach pebbles to compliment a new planter.



We found a local well-known point of interest near Redcrest in the gently rolling hills of the Eel River valley 




at the Loleta Cheese Factory.  Lunch in the backyard gardens of the ‘grilled cheese bar and coffee shop’ was scrumptious.  A delightful talk with the owner about raising dairy cows answered a lot of questions that had been on our minds.  (How do the cows know when to be milked?)  


We have been exposed to a whole new way of cooking the simple grilled cheese sandwich—from now on it will be with some good bakery bread and a minimum of two different cheeses.


To alleviate some of the guilt of a healthy dose of fat grams at the cheese factory, we stopped by a national wildlife refuge on the way home.  It was a nice change to stroll in a tranquil scene out from under trees,



with only red-winged blackbirds


and various waterfowl to keep us company.



We spent a most enjoyable two weeks in Redcrest on the Avenue of the Giants.  The quaint Victorian villages were a fun trip back in time, but it was the sense of spirituality and peace among the redwoods that was seared into our memories.


What surprised us was how quiet it was in a redwood forest that was absent the background din of hundreds of visitors.  Perhaps the super-high redwood canopy served as a sound barrier that blocked the usual sounds of Nature created by birds and ground animals.  Indeed, except for a slug or two, every grove of giants revealed very few ground animals.  Was there no attractive food source for squirrels?  

Being surrounded by a scenario that harkened back to a prehistoric era before man came on the scene, I felt like I should be asking, “Where are the dinosaurs?”  Perhaps you could say it was the trees that ruled the roost and enforced natural selection on the hierarchy of life.  

What we discovered was that the primordial story the redwoods revealed to us was actually only a mirage of silence…

… In reality, their silence WAS a conversation.  





May 5, 2018

SPRINGTIME IN BODEGA BAY

Francis Ford Coppola Winery

Carol writes:  As springtime and the end of the rainy season announced its arrival on the northern California coast, we put down jacks at our new “home” in Bodega Bay. 


We camped in a cozy little RV park just a short hike from the beach.


In all venues around Bodega Bay, spring wildflowers were at their peak, and signs of spring were everywhere.  In the campground, orange so-called canyon live-forever (?) presented a succulent show.


Sprouting right out of a sand dune, these purple beauties were breathtaking.


A short conversation with a local resident in a cheese shop pointed us to this incredible vista from atop Coleman Valley Road (thinking about you, Uncle Jay),


where tender shoots of brilliant green spring grass were mighty tasty for this 4-legged beauty.


The lush fairways and greens on this links-style golf course caught Al's attention.


The invasive wildflower ‘Pride of Madeira’ 





was plentiful in the tsunami hazard zone (!) along the Pinnacle Canyon Trail to the beach.

Low tide offered great opportunities for exploring the tide pools, where we saw crustaceous critters clinging to rocks,

with sea anemones anchored below.


We came across a most curious find on the beach—hundreds of bleached-by-the-sun Velella ‘skeletons,’ jellyfish-like creatures that float on the water and are steered by an off-center “sail.”  A fresh Velella was a magnificent midnight blue!
















Not even a cloudy day could spoil a picnic spot on the beach.


From our perspective, much of California’s early history has been associated with Mexico.  However, at Fort Ross, it was the Russian connection that captured our attention, since Al’s ancestry on his mother’s side was Russian.  

In 1812, Russian and Alaskan explorers and traders selected this remote setting for Fort Ross.  Plentiful oak and redwood forests provided a convenient supply of lumber,


and the settlement’s elevated position above a protected cove 


satisfied security concerns.  Fort Ross functioned as a food supply for Russian settlements in Alaska, as well as a base from which to hunt sea otters and fur seals, a key part of Russia’s Alaskan economy.

The architectural style of Fort Ross resembled Russian forts in Alaska and Siberia.  The enclosed courtyard was rectangular in shape with guard houses in two of the corners.


Kitchens, warehouses, repair and supply shops,


a church and a commander’s house 


were part of the settlement.

The graveyard with Russian crosses was a reminder of the difficult realities of life two hundred years ago in what otherwise looked to be a rather idealized world to the casual tourist.


Coastal redwoods are the tallest living trees on Earth and are found only in a narrow coastal region from southern Oregon to central California.  At Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve we discovered a nicely preserved site that was set aside to preserve a rare grove of old-growth redwood trees.


The dirt path of the Pioneer Nature Trail wound through the stately redwoods in a much more natural setting than the one at Muir Woods.  In addition, there were a lot less people than at Muir Woods, and parking problems were manageable…





Armstrong Woods was named in honor of Colonel James Armstrong, who was responsible for setting this land aside in the 1870s to preserve it from clear-cutting by the lumber barons of the day.  It seemed fitting that one of the oldest trees in the grove was named after Colonel Armstrong…



One of Sonoma County’s chief claims to fame is its winemaking industry.  Which one of the many hundreds of wineries would be worth a visit?  At Francis Ford Coppola Winery Al found a winner for us—lovely grounds,


a Hollywood-style pool for weekend visitors, complete with poolside dressing rooms,



and some glasses of wine much to our liking.


Display cases with Francis Ford Coppola movie memorabilia, featuring Oscars from 5 of his wins, rounded out a very pleasant visit.


Movie buffs of a certain age may already be asking themselves why the name “Bodega Bay" seems so familiar.  The answer is that sleepy little Bodega Bay was used as the set location for Alfred Hitchcock’s horror film classic “The Birds.”  And Bodega Bay has never forgotten it!



For fun, we borrowed a copy of the “The Birds” from the campground movie collection.  In spite of dated special effects that seemed so creative when “The Birds” was released in 1963, we did admire Hitchcock’s mastery at framing a scene for maximum impact.

“The Tides” restaurant where some brief movie scenes were shot was still in existence.  There was also that schoolhouse in the well-remembered scene where the children raced from school in terror while being attacked by angry birds.  The schoolhouse has been lovingly restored and functions today as a private residence.


As for us, I noticed that we were in the company of birds wherever we went around Bodega Bay.  The simple reason may have been that the relatively undeveloped natural setting around Bodega Bay was a perfect bird habitat.  With memories of Hitchcock’s movie periodically running in the background of our thoughts, we kidded each other about being on the lookout for unusual numbers of menacing ravens or gulls…  But all we saw were tight-flocking sanderlings snoozing at the beach. 


  
In fact, for the entirety of our two-week visit, all of our bird sightings were anything but threatening…