Wed, May 18 I like the dark, but I hate nature, I HATE NATURE!

Michael and I hop out of our beds with a cheery disposition because we know we are finally leaving this God forsaken city. After we get our shiny car from the car rental (oohhh they had to upgrade us to a luxurious new Ford Taurus) we head out for California!

The first portion of today’s drive is highway driving and since I am the designated “highway driver” I start off today’s trip behind the wheel. Oregon is very beautiful. We decide that Portland=bad, Oregon=good. We saw lots & lots of cows and sheep & a few llamas as well. For breakfast we stop off at a diner in southern Oregon. This place is great! It is all fifties out! Elvis everywhere! It is literally a mom & pop shop. Mom is our stereotypical diner waitress and dad is the cook! We get a lot of food for a cheap price and I especially like my super thick bacon.

Our first stop in California is Crescent City. Wow. What a depressingly drab place this is. Crescent City is a very gray town. Crescent City has been hit by 17 tsunamis in the last 65 years. 3 of these have caused substantial damage, actually I think the whole town was wiped out in 1964 by a tsunami. Again, Michael and I think all of this tsunami business is rather amusing, especially the notices that tell you to go up the big hill if you feel an earthquake. Truthfully, now I feel a little bit guilty because ella called me yesterday because just on Tuesday night Crescent City had a tsunami warning. Apparently there was an earthquake out at sea and the tsunami alarm went off in town. Can you imagine Michael & I if that happened while we were there? We would have died carrying all of our luggage up the big damn hill because Lord knows Mr. Wood would not have left anything behind!!

Anyhoo Crescent City isn’t all too exciting, but it marks the official beginning of Redwood territory and also it means that we are dangerously close (about 60 miles) to our home for the night, Arcata.

Our first Redwood stop is Jedediah Smith Redwoods. The most important thing you need to know about the Jedediah Smith Redwoods is that this is where George Lucas filmed the Return of the Jedi scenes for the forest moon of Endor (where the ewoks live). That was very exciting. So here we are in the redwoods. We are so excited to be in the Redwoods (and where they filmed Jedi) that we jump out of the car and decide to take a look around. First order of business is to put our ella-purchased ponchos on and take some pictures in the redwoods in the rain. Check! The rain stops and we decide to go for a little walk, but not before I see a sign warning of bears. This brings me back to reality. Hmmm, I don’t like nature. I don’t want to see any animals up close that can do me bodily harm. Michael, still operating under his redwood inducing, nature loving delirium, assures me that everything will be fine and pulls me (dragging my feet) deep into the forest (about 3 feet). We take a mini-hike (about 7 steps) but every time I hear a noise I turn around expecting a giant grizzly bear to eat me. Defeated, Michael concedes and we stick to the area by the road. This leads us to a big map and some important notices. One of which warns of black widow spiders. Michael is instantly brought back to reality. “What! Where am I! What is going on! I don’t like nature! What the hell are we doing out here! Back to the car!!”

Thankfully there is a little road that drives through a bit of the forest so we can peak out from the safety of our vehicle. I think it would be a swell idea for the National Park Service to install some of those nifty covered hatch type things that Disney World uses to transport tourists through all the fun stops in Epcot. Then you can safely enjoy nature from a distance without the constant threat of death by spider bite or bear consumption.

This is why we really, really like Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. You can drive right through the heart of the park and make quick picture stops along the way! Hooray for the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway! There is even a terrific little spot where you can see elk!

I’ve already explained to you the banality of trying to convey the feeling of seeing nature’s enormity. Yes, we all understand that Redwoods are big trees. But when you see them, and you stand next to one…you are nothing. You are a dot in the universe. These things are massive and thousands of years old. It is just incredible. This really hits me at Prairie Creek. Wow.

Michael is very excited for the Trees of Mystery! You can take a Sky Trail through the park (hooray for more safe exploration…although truthfully I’m a lil bit nervous about the whole sky lift thing)…but sadly, we will not get to see any of the fun Trees of Mystery (except for the super fun gift shop) because we’ve arrived minutes late and now it is closed! Boooo! Although I am disappointed about missing out on some of the cool trees, I’m a bit relieved about skipping the gondola ride. It was worth it just to see the humongous Paul Bunyon & Babe the blue ox.

Finally we arrive in Arcata. The Howard Johnson is a 5 min ride from downtown, so we drop our bags and go into town for some dinner. Now, let me explain something. Of course I did research and I knew that this town had some hippies, but holy whoa! A whole town of hippies! I mean nothing but hippies. It was like being in the twilight zone. I felt like eric cartman. I wanted to bash all of the hippies over the heads with something. Honestly, most hippies are perfectly nice people but for the love of God can we speed things up a little bit? And do you have anything against shampoo? I really can’t stand people that make me wait…and wait…and wait. So we stop for dinner at the Humboldt Brewery. Lots of college hippies. So we sit down. And wait, and wait, and you guessed it! Wait some more! Finally grown up hippie waitress takes our order. She can tell we are not hippies. This makes her nervous, and I’m surprised a little hippie signal didn’t go off and we were taking away kicking and screaming to a secluded area to be hippified. Days later Michael and I would emerge with dreadlocks, tye-died apparel, a phish cd (blech), sandals and stoned out of our skulls. Thankfully, this did not happen. I decide that if I’m going to be forced to wait I’m going to hit the jukebox and hopefully find some happy music. I can’t believe my eyes. Is that the Drumline Soundtrack? And wait, it gets better, JC was also on some pop compilation cd. So I decide to fight the hippies with pop warfare and I play a JC Chasez song in the local hippie brewery (what! If you don’t want to hear it you shouldn’t put it in the box!) We anxiously sit through my other selections waiting to see if the JC song will cause a hippie riot causing us to be run out of town. But as the music starts a most peculiar thing happens, hippies begin jamming to JC!!! Crazy. This is why I can not completely loathe hippies. They are so go with the flow and they don’t hate. But yeah, that ruled. JC in the hippie bar!

It was a pretty mellow evening at the Howard Johnson after our hippie excursion. We did some laundry and watched some tv. Ahhh tv, how I have missed you!

Arcata Howard Johnson
Water Pressure 3
Room Space 3
Temp Control 3.5
Décor/ambiance 1
Staff Helpfulness 3
Beds 3, pillows 2
Coffee 3
Hotel Facilities 2.5
Noise Level 3

Extras:
+1 for laundry
+1 for extra tv channels
+1 for postcards!

Thurs, May 19

Much fun ahead of us today! Lots of driving, lots of redwoods and then we will be in San Francisco! EEEEE!

Our first stop is Humboldt Redwood State Park. Crazy. We take the scenic byway so that we can see the best collection of coastal redwoods. A lot of the drive was filled with stunned silence and every once in a while one of us would say, “wow” or “crazy”. Good times.

OOOHHHHH! We are finally approaching the KT Redwood Highlight. The Drive Thru Tree! Yipppee! But first a warning. If you ever decide to take a trip through the California Redwoods and you want to see the Drive Thru Tree, go to Leggett, to the real tree. Do not try to see the ghetto version that is on the side of the road and held up by wire (scary). It is a bad, bad idea. Ghetto Drive Thru Tree=Bad. Leggett=Good.

So yes, we are about to enter the Drive Thru Tree area…we interrupt this broadcast for a Wood Family emergency. It seems that both of Michael’s brothers have called him this morning. That is odd, both calling on the same day. And what’s this? A message from Mom, a message from Jack asking about mom. Uh-oh. Now we are in the midst of a crisis because we don’t know if something happened to Michael’s mom. Cell phone reception is scarce in the redwoods but luckily Michael gets through to his mom and she is ok. A little scare but she is ok. Yikes! That is scary. That right there, that is why I can’t live on the West Coast even though I love it a zillion times more than NJ. If anything ever happened to someone I love and I had to take a 5 hour plane ride to get to them, nope, not good.

We recover from our momentary crisis and head into the tree. EEEK. This is a little stressful…it is a tight squeeze and I don’t want to hurt the Ford Taurus. Phew! Fun gift shop here too! Hooray for fun gift shops!

It is a very exciting moment on our trip, we are about to leave 101 and begin our journey on US 1. This road is very scenic and very windy. Actually, all you need to know is the quote of the day. “No more wind-y, wind-y”.

So we are on 1 for 15 seconds before the winding starts. I’m talking nonstop winding up the mountain, winding down the mountain. Wow, if this is how it is the whole time, it is going to be a very long trip. Finally we emerge from all the twisting and see the coast. Hooray! The west coast is so beautiful. You really have to just stop and take it all in. It is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Crazy.

My driving for the day comes to an end when we reach Mendocino. Mendocino is another little beach town. I like it, a lot. We have lunch at a sandwich shop called Tote Fete and my sandwich is DELIC! Hmmm roast turkey, havarti cheese, lettuce and cranberry sauce on ciabatta bread. So tasty!

Now it is Michael’s turn to drive. This is where things get interesting. There are big sweeping views. Lots of winding, lots of S turns, U Turns, dramatic turns…At one point as we are going up a mountain, we thought the road ended. We whipped around the corner and were like, “hey where’s the road?” Because now we are facing the mountain. Insanity. Craziness! Plus, to make matters worse there are no guardrails. What crack addict decided that a little curb was enough to keep you from plummeting 1000 feet to the rocky ocean? Imagine this. You are on a mountain. The road is only big enough for you and the car coming at you in the other lane. Then about 2 feet from your tire is a curb and then a drop. So when you are driving all you see out of your left eye is ocean. It is a little unnerving. I think I spent 75% of our Cliffside drive in the fetal position. On top of that we were having a serious fuel issue. The Taurus came with a nifty gizmo that tells you exactly how many miles of gas you have left. We were supposed to have more than enough gas to get us to San Francisco. This was not the case.

So to say that we were stressed is a bit of an understatement. To calm Mikey I put on the Buffy Soundtrack. This seemed to work for a bit especially when we decided to partake in the Anya-Xander duet. I tried to replay the song a few times to keep us calm but its effects started to wear off and we would stop singing (mid verse) to exclaim…Jesus Christ!!!! Making matters worse (and a little life-endangering) is that in the midst of all these turns and cliffs and inclines we’ve hit our insane portion of the day! Today it is not so much giddy as just complete lunacy. We are crazy, we are laughing, we are just barely staying on the road!!!

Thankfully, we had about a 45 minute respite from all the stress when 1 veered inland. Ahh cows. Cows and sheeps and goats and llamas. They make me feel better. This part of the drive reminded us of Ireland. Not that either of us has been to Ireland but it is the big, green, rolling hills that Ireland looks like in pictures.

As we head back towards the coast and then into the winding mountains I start to feel nauseous. We’ve been in the car all day. We are dangerously low on gas, “NO MORE WIND-Y WIND-Y”.
Finally, with 3 miles of gas left we find a gas station! (Cue halleluiah music) And look there is 101!! From the 1-101 merge it is like 6 miles to San Francisco! (Cue halleluiah music) We jump back into the car, rejuvenated (well as rejuvenated as one can be after being in the car for 9 hours)…A freeway! Hooray! Hooray! Although I don’t think Michael is as excited to be driving on a 4 lane freeway…In any case we come around the turn and there it is…The Golden Gate Bridge! (Cue halleluiah music)

Stay tuned for the dive bar tour of SF and the accompanying visit to the shady part of town!