Trip of Giants - Bears and Mysteries

---

Picked up the hire car: Mazda 5 Auto, loads of room yay! (I'd gotten tired of struggling with manuals on top of all the other challenges of driving on the wrong side of the road). Having packed the night before, we loaded up the car, said our fairwells and hit the road around 9:45.

It has been a pretty special and magical stay, with almost everything being even cooler and more fun than I'd imagined.

A 3 hour drive along the I5 was smooth and uneventful. I drove at the 65mph speed limit, which was unnusual with either other cars going much faster or the trucks going slower (by law). There was enough traffic to necessitate regular changing of lanes. We stopped at Grants Pass, fast-food place called Carl Jr for lunch. It was much better than Hungry Jacks (Burger King equivalent in Aus) and is somewhere somewhere we could happily come back to. At the Tourist info centre a very loquacious lady keen to give us stopping options on the way told about some large bears on motorcycles.
It sounded a bit odd, but we're supposed to take the initiatives on odd things while travelling, so we found the Wild Bunch display. They're a bunch of bears made out of fibreglass and mounted on real motorbikes. Interesting to see what people get up to in the back country. The boys had a bit of fun poling around then we carried on.

I'd thought of maybe seeing the Oregon Caves, but the tour is 90 minutes so we skipped that and carried on to a place called the Trees of Mystery. this is a little bit tacky-touristy ($42 for the four of us), but informative with an assortment of natural tree formations explained, gondola to not much, great carvings and story line of Paul Bunyan. A giant statue of Paul Bunyan and the Blue Cow (American folklore) would answer questions thrown at it by the kids, so Liam commented on his hairy chest which made Paul laugh.

We finally got to Eureka around 6:30pm, booked into the Travelodge (very basic) and had dinner at Dennys. That was also very enjoyable, with low priced meals that are a couple of steps removed from basic takeaways but still very nice.

---

Photos

Harley Hog Master
My alter ego

Brotherhood Tree
Not the biggest, at only 297 feet, 19 feet wide