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Published: October 22nd 2006
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Ok, so the plan for today was to drive south, visit the Avenue of the Giants, take the supposedly “heart in your mouth” twisty road to Route 1 and get as far down the California coast as we could. Carl, looked out the window when we first got up - the sky was blue, with just a hint of fog… All the elements were in place, so what happened?!...
Statistics
Starting Destination: Eureka, California
Ending Destination: Fort Bragg, California
Ending Destination GPS: N: 39° 25.789’ W: 123° 48.331’ Elev: 26’
Miles Driven: 194.5
Miles of Straight Road Driven: Hardly any!
Victorian Houses
Our first indication that things were not going to go as planned was the weather… Remember that blue sky? Well, when we went outside to pack the truck - it was gone! There was fog everywhere. Maria wanted to see some of the Victorian Houses that were built in Eureka during the boom times, so we headed back into town and found the Carson Castle - now turned into a private club, but very well maintained; and some other examples. It was uncanny, the fog seemed to retreat to just down the street from the Castle when we got there - perhaps the day wasn’t going to be so bad after all!! After the slight detour, we followed Route 101 south out of town…
But we hadn’t gotten very far, when Maria (again) asked whether we could take another slight detour to Ferndale which was billed as a “Victorian Town.” It was only 6 miles off the main road so we thought it wouldn’t take very long. The trip to Ferndale didn’t take too long, we speculated about the aeration machines in the brown soup outside the dairy farm, about some “bigger than life sized” cut-out figures in some of the fields along the way, did a lap of main street, took some photos and were just about to retrace our steps when “it” happened…
It
Carl had looked at the map and saw that there was a “back” way to the Avenue of the Giants that took you along the coast - he suggested that we take that route, instead of the main road. Maria was game so, after a little bit of looking we found the correct road… Part of the reason we couldn’t find the road was because it was about 1 ½ lanes wide and went straight up - right out of town. Carl cut off a wide load “pilot car” to make the turn and then had to fight to keep ahead of the wide load almost all the way to Petrolia! The wide load had almost certainly driven the road before and we hadn’t - it was an adventure, twisty and steep with a pretty poor road surface. It felt like that when the road had been constructed, it was just “put in” without any consideration for what would be the best path… For example, there were plenty of “blind hills,” you know, those roads where you are going up and have no idea whether the road will go right, left or straight until you get there! Or perhaps it was the best path, and we are just wimps!! Nevertheless, it was great fun, there weren’t so many trees that you couldn’t see the horizon, and there were very few cars, certainly we were the only “tourists” as most everybody traveling in the opposite direction waved! The road took us up and over the King Range towards the coast and then along the coast - literally, in some cases we were no more than 20 feet from the ocean, it was beautiful. Somewhere along the coast we lost the wide load, there had been several landslides and (we learnt later) an earthquake that caused 12 miles of the coast along the road to uplift by 1-4 feet exposing some of the tidal communities. Unfortunately we couldn’t take the coast road the whole way - we had to go back up and over the mountains…
Petrolia
For the first part (30 miles) of the road there were no towns, only a few scattered houses… Everything was very dry (except for one lawn), and Carl made the comment that it almost looked like Australia without the Eucalyptus Trees… ’till we turned the corner and there they were - some really big ones! Part way back over the King Range we came to Petrolia - we had both been wondering about the name and sure enough… Petrolia was near the site of the “first drilled oil wells in California to be producing crude for sale and refining,” and that was in 1865!! The wells weren’t commercially viable at that time and the town went boom and bust almost overnight. There was almost not enough of a town to be one—no gas station, pub or store only a post office and church! We stopped in the local State Park/Campground and there were some very interesting informational signs that told us a lot about the neighborhood. It turns out that in this area (which geologists call the Mendocino Junction) there are 3 tectonic plates that come together which is very rare, and causes a lot of earthquake activity. It is also the reason why the most western point in California is in this area - which we missed as we thought the area was remote enough without us traveling an unknown distance down a gravel road… We would have liked to see the lighthouse, but it was not to be! After lunch, we thought we had better get back to the plan as the only “big” trees we had seen were Eucalypts!
Finding the Big Trees
We kept following the Mattole Road, through Honeydew and across the Mattole River on a one lane bridge before we started going up again… We knew it was getting serious when some of the corners were sign posted 10 mph and they really meant it!! In places the road had subsided and some of it was residing halfway down the mountain - no problems, we’ll just turn it into a one-lane road!! We were wondering when we would run into the “big trees,” and suddenly, around the corner there was the Humboldt Redwoods State Park sign. Gradually we started seeing evidence of Redwoods… As a side note, there were none in the Mattole Valley as the weather was not appropriate—not enough fog and extreme temperature changes. The trees started getting bigger; the road flattened out but was just as twisty - only this time we were turning to avoid the trees!
Part way along this road we stopped to look at the Giant Trees and The Giant Tree - recognized by the AFA as the National Champion Coast Redwood in 1991. It was amazing; it really didn’t stand out from the others as much as you would have thought… That said, it was still “very” big, you feel almost like an ant standing beside them! We continued following the road until it met up with the old Highway 101, in that area it is called the “Avenue of the Giants,” our original destination for the day… The sights were truly impressive, but after all the other driving we had done in more remote locations, the fact that we were sharing the road with lots of others meant it was not quite the same… Especially all the tourist attractions—The Drive Through Tree, the One Tree House, Trees of Mystery and so on…
The Road to Route 1
Back on Highway 101 our next task was to find the Coast road… We found the turn off near Leggett and got part way along the road before Carl looked down at the gas guage… Things were not looking good, so we turned around and found the nearest gas station—thankfully without back-tracking too far! Back on the right road… yes, it was twisty and turny - but not as bad as we had been led to believe - but more importantly it had an excellent road surface and there were more cars… We were still glad we had got gas as we don’t think we would have made it to the next gas station!! There was not much to see along the road - it as was predominantly “tree tunnels” the whole way - until you reached the coast. We got to the coast just a few minutes too late to see the sun set, but got a few pictures anyway! From there it was pretty much a straight shot down the coast to Fort Bragg, our stopping point for the evening… It had been a grand adventure!!
Carl’s Travel Trivia
Yesterday’s Answer: 1540 miles
Today’s Question: Is the “Giant Tree” still the National Champion Coast Redwood?
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Marv Bush
non-member comment
Giant Tree Trivia ?
No the Giant Tree is not the National Champion Coast Redwood yet. MB