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Post by brian2957 on Jul 7, 2018 11:39:43 GMT
Look forward to it (-:
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 7, 2018 22:29:14 GMT
Wednesday 20th JuneThe itinerary for the day is dead simple: 1). Go south via the Avenue of the Giants 2). Find somewhere to sleep a bit nearer to San Francisco than we are now The Avenue of the Giants is within the Humboldt Redwoods State Park and it includes the utterly majestic 10,000 acre Rockefeller Forest. This is the largest remaining contiguous old-growth Coast Redwood forest in the world. Several of the tallest trees in the world are in this forest, and they are thousands of years old. Eighty percent of the world's ancient forest is gone and can never be replaced. This one was saved by a group of extremely forward thinking people in 1931, one of whom was John D. Rockefeller, Jr, who, twice, donated a million dollars, which was matched by the State of California. It's just beautiful.     
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 7, 2018 22:35:03 GMT
There is more to this forest than just trees, you know. It's such a remarkable place that they even have butterflies that look almost identical to Slinger    |
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 7, 2018 22:46:52 GMT
We've been seeing a lot of Turkey Vultures on this trip. I have shot hundreds of bad photos of them. Here are just two of them!   |
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 7, 2018 23:04:15 GMT
After spending most of the day exploring the woods, we did a quick run down the interstate to the northern end of Highway 1, the famous Pacific coast road. The first section through forest was great fun to drive but quite demanding mentally - constantly opposing tight up and downhill bends, some so tight that they have 10mph speed limits (....apparently!) Tomorrow is our last full day here and we still have almost 200 miles to go to get to San Fran on the coast road. This is what we saw when we broke out of the woods and hit the coastline.     |
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 7, 2018 23:06:10 GMT
The end of the day saw us getting our heads down in Fort Bragg. A seaside town with a beach that everyone seemed to think that we should have heard of. "The beach at Fort Bragg? ...No, never heard of it!"
"You're kidding, right?!?!" <iframe width="18" height="13.700000000000045" style="position: absolute; width: 18px; height: 13.7px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 5px; top: 85px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_38539055" scrolling="no"></iframe> <iframe width="18" height="13.700000000000045" style="position: absolute; width: 18px; height: 13.7px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 836px; top: 85px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_31938413" scrolling="no"></iframe> <iframe width="18" height="13.700000000000045" style="position: absolute; width: 18px; height: 13.7px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 5px; top: 705px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_10128702" scrolling="no"></iframe> <iframe width="18" height="13.700000000000045" style="position: absolute; width: 18px; height: 13.7px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 836px; top: 705px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_42675604" scrolling="no"></iframe> |
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Post by MartinT on Jul 9, 2018 8:01:01 GMT
That's a nice cloud formation in your 2nd photo.
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 13:34:21 GMT
Yes, I don't think I have ever seen one quite like it. It never seemed to move very much, so I guess it was streaming up, parallel with the coast.
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Post by Barrington on Jul 9, 2018 14:30:54 GMT
This is an amazing trip the distances OMG hard to believe , isn't the UK tiny . Chris will you be putting up a map of the entire journey at the end ?
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 17:50:50 GMT
Hi Barry, yes, I plan to do that shortly.
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 19:32:46 GMT
Thursday 21st June
We wake up bright and early in Fort Bragg on our last full day of the trip, with a plan to see what all the fuss is about with that beach.
Breakfast first though.
We find a cafe which is remarkable for two things.
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 19:42:43 GMT
Remarkable Thing Number One:To the left of our table - the biggest muffins I have ever seen in my life. Now, despite what you might imagine by my generous girth, I'm not a muffin eater, but I have to marvel at the sheer size of these monsters! 
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 19:44:16 GMT
Remarkable Thing Number Two:Turn to the right of our table and...errrr...there's a bleedin' great steam train. <iframe width="21.480000000000018" height="14.600000000000023" style="position: absolute; width: 21.48px; height: 14.6px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 5px; top: 69px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_69895292" scrolling="no"></iframe> <iframe width="21.480000000000018" height="14.600000000000023" style="position: absolute; width: 21.48px; height: 14.6px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 1006px; top: 69px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_59258549" scrolling="no"></iframe> <iframe width="21.480000000000018" height="14.600000000000023" style="position: absolute; width: 21.48px; height: 14.6px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 5px; top: 734px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_43994432" scrolling="no"></iframe> <iframe width="21.480000000000018" height="14.600000000000023" style="position: absolute; width: 21.48px; height: 14.6px; z-index: -9999; border-style: none; left: 1006px; top: 734px;" id="MoatPxIOPT0_50166006" scrolling="no"></iframe> 
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 19:56:42 GMT
Right then, what about this beach?  Nothing too remarkable about that then? Just some rocks and water. But, no. Look a bit closer at the pebbles on the beach.  They're made of glass!  The place was the town dump in the 1920s and 30s. The, all the metal got recovered as scrap during the war and everything else washed away or rotted. Except the bottles, which got smashed up and smoothed off by the surf. It's a minor environmental disaster, but it is really quite pretty. |
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 20:06:00 GMT
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 20:13:31 GMT
Then, all of a sudden, we round a bend and BANG! We're right back where we started almost two weeks ago.   |
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 20:15:25 GMT
Here's the full route.  Stand back a bit...  |
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Post by MartinT on Jul 9, 2018 20:42:44 GMT
It's a big country!
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 20:45:35 GMT
Isn't it just?!
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 9, 2018 20:47:20 GMT
That map says the route is 2,748 miles but with the side trips and noodling around, we ended up at just over 3,400 miles.
Not a single one of them was boring.
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