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Published: October 4th 2012
A couple of hours North out of San Francisco, we stopped in a little town called Gerberville as we thought we were pretty close to the Redwood area and wanted to get some tourist info and local maps. Gerberville was a bit of a surprise. Along the way we had noticed a lot of dreadlock types and organic food places (bit of a difference from out around Nevada!), but Gerberville was a complete Nimbin! On getting out of the car we had to walk through a cloud of sweet smelling smoke while a group of stoned guys rambled on at each other sounding like a cheech and chong movie, and then we noticed hemp stores, the "smoking caterpillar store" and the large number of rasta images around. It was pretty funny to find this scene in a little country town, but I guess California is the state for it.
We drove on and got to a State Park campground, only to find that a site was $35! That's the second time we've come across expensive camping, and both times were State Parks. I don't know why they charge so much. We didn't have enough money and went back into the
Big Tree
Fell over.nearest town where we found a really nice campsite on the edge of the river with new showers and broadband and it was only $25. Much better.
In the morning we got going pretty early (by our standards anyway) and took the time to stop at a few of the Redwood groves while driving along the Avenue of the Giants. It's a pretty amazing drive. The trees are so large, and the lack of low level branches makes them seem even larger. Just north of where we stayed the night we stopped at a roadside stall for some homemade blackberry popsicles as recommended by the campsite manager. Yum! At one of the groves we saw the Dyerville Giant which was a 370ft tall tree that fell over not that long ago (1991). It was the tallest tree in the world, and was estimated to be 2500 years old and weight around 1 million tons! Pretty amazing to think about it really - entire civilizations have rose and fell while it was still alive. Now it is (very) slowly rotting into the ground and providing nutrients for all the other plants around it.
We drove on through Eureka and
Big Tree
Little Man continued north to Redwood National/State Park. The campsites were the usual $35 and there weren't any nearby alternatives so we just had to grin and bear it. Showers were extra and there were no other facilities. Oh well - the campsite at least scored pretty high on the beauty factor. After lunch we went on a short walk through more of the tall trees including going past one of the largest in the area at around 310ft. We overheard someone talking about research being done in the tree canopies that has shown entire ecosystems up there with huckleberry bushes, hummingbirds, salamanders and more.
Sunday morning and we had decided to do a long hike which started at the camp ground and ended at Fern Gully near the beach. It was a 10 mile round trip and passed by plenty of massive redwoods, and crystal clear waterways. When we were back in San Francisco, Jake had told us how redwoods frequently shoot up right next to their parent tree and you often get them growing in a ring around the original tree which eventually dies. This was really evident in here with rings of massive trees that had begun to
Ex Biggest
Was one of the largest. Then it fell down. It doesn't look that large until you see the puny human next to it. Note all the new growth of ferns, moss and trees growing out of it. Nature is bloody good at recycling. fuse together into even larger conglomerations of wood. The trees are very enduring too - we saw one which had a huge split down the centre of it, but it was clearly still alive. Fern Gully was very cool when we finally got there - it's a creek carved out with 50ft high banks covered in ferns. You walk along the bottom of it and are surrounded by walls of ferns. A part of the original Jurassic Park was filmed here. The redwood forests have been movie stars too - the Ewok villiage from Return of the Jedi was filmed in a redwood forest (though it was the one nearer to San Francisco). The only downside with this walk was that there was a car park very close to Fern Gully so despite there not being many people along the way, there were heaps of people wandering around the gully including a few smokers. ahh nothing like the smell of fresh air! After a stop for a snack in the sun, we started the walk back out again and eventually got back to camp around 5pm with very sore feet and feeling pretty hungry. Some tomato soup with polenta and
cheese fixed up the hungries.
The next day we got going again and travelled up towards Eugene. Not long after leaving camp we were treated to the most spectacular light show as morning light started filtering through the mist in the trees. What made it amazing was that looking ahead the sky was bright blue, but the light was coming from the side through mist. Hard to explain - check the photos. Around lunch time we stopped at Pacific Botanicals which is a herb farm in Oregon. They described it as "pretty small" but compared to the Goulds farm it's huge - around 150 hectares. We buy our Echinacea root from them (and some other things that we can't grow ourselves). They were really excited to have us drop in and were happy to show us around the farm including the huge tanks they use to dry the herbs, and the grinders. By the time we left we were extrememly hungry so we stopped not too far away in a rest area and cooked up some lunch, before driving on to Eugene.
Eugene is a funny place - it reminded us a bit of Lismore as it's a
smallish city with a real mix of different cultural types (hippies, rednecks, ferals, etc.). We found a local hotel that sounded ok on the net and Chris gave them a call. He was answered by a very grumpy woman who said there were no rooms available and rooms were normally $75 a night. We jumped back online and booked a room (at the supposedly full hotel) for $45 per night for the next two nights. We then drove around to the hotel where the same grumpy woman checked us in (though she did start to cheer up once we started chatting). It was a funny hotel - looked like a dump from the outside, but actually in fairly good condition inside. We dragged our stuff upstairs and then somewhat naughtily cooked dinner in the bathroom (no smoke alarm, and a decent extractor fan).
The next morning we ate some muesli and some of the "continental breakfast" provided by the hotel which was a coffee and a suspicious baked item in a plastic bag with a VERY long list of ingredients most of which was incomprehensible (apart from high fructose corn syrup which is in so many things here). Nena
ex biggest tree
Same tree as before from about a quarter of the way along it looking back. had been looking online to find a good local coffee and had narrowed it down to two cafes. Since we had booked two morning - this was all good. The first morning we went to one that was in town and near a bike shop (a good sign). We grabbed a special type of Mexican Mocha they make using Chocolate Ganache. Sounded great... tasted terrible. We couldn't work out if it was off, or just not to our liking. Eventually Chris got up and asked about it. The barrista told us that it could be the bitter chocolate or the milk they use which comes from a local farm and is "a little gamey in flavour". Chris tasted some of the milk and nearly gagged. Yep.. that was it. Apparently it always tastes like this and wasn't off. ok, so we drank some more, but after a while had to give up. Oh well. Next we drove out to Mountain Rose Herbs which is a manufacturer on the outskirts of town that sells a wide range of dried herbs, tinctures, creams, books and more. They don't really have a storefront for purchases, but more of a showroom with some samples
Funny face
A bit like a blot test - I'm sure you'll see what you want to see in this one. to try (there was a chocolate elixir which was amazing). We had a bit of a look around and ordered a book to pick up the next day before we left. Next we drove out to a shopping centre which just happened to have a Best Buys who just happen to sell Apple Macs (cheaper than Apple do). While Nena spent some time listening to a salesman explain the virtues of a MacBook Air to another newbie, Chris considered xbox headphones, a helmet mounted video camera, and searched for a solid state hard drive for his pc (not in stock unfortunately). Nena finally bit the bullet and bought her new toy, and left the store pretty excited. We dropped into a weird deserted shopping mall on the way back to the hotel trying to find a supermarket. A bit further along we found a Trader Joes so we could stock up on food for lunch. The remander of the day was pretty uneventful, and we cooked another meal back in the hotel for dinner.
In the morning we took our time packing the car and getting ready before going to check out the other recommended cafe in Eugene. It
Noms
Blackberry icey poles. Yum was in a semi-industrial area and looked pretty scungy from the outside, but we didn't let that dissuade us and ventured in to "The Wandering Goat". Immediately we felt a lot more comfortable - nice spacious interior, but subdued lighting and a good mix of clients (meaning people are coming from all over the place). We ordered just a normal flat white each, and then grabbed an interesting looking Bagel (basil, spinach and walnut) which was delicious. The coffees were really good and served at a good temperature too (most USA coffee comes out somewhere around 90C). We dropped into a nearby REI store (large chain camping/outdoors shop) for a peek, but didn't find much and picked up our book from the herbal store before leaving Eugene and heading further north to Portland.
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Helene
non-member comment
It looks like an Equisetum sp. of some sort... (horsetail)