Avenue of the Giants - 25 August 2012

Although another redwoods "feast" was on the program for the day we took a while to get back to the trees as we started off with the wood, as in wooden Victorian buildings.  Eureka has a significant area downtown of old Victorian era buildings.  Clearly there has been a drive to highlight this area as the architectural details of the buildings have been highlighted with great colour schemes.

At the top end of town is the crown jewel, the old Carson Mansion, now a club. Mr Carson was a pioneer lumberman and his house is an 1888 Victorian timber extravaganza, totally overshadowing an otherwise impressive villa across the road that he built as a wedding present fro his son.

A few miles down the road is another town that prides itself on its Victorian era architecture, Ferndale, so we detoured to visit that as well.

After rejoining Hwy 101 briefly we left to take the Avenue of the Giants road which more-or-less parallels Hwy 101 but allows stopping and excursions into the trees.  There are various significant tress to walk to: Big Tree; Tall Tree; Giant Tree; Flat Iron Tree; Founders Tree; and the fallen, Dyerville Giant so we walked to them all.  Dyerville Giant toppled in 1991 and as you can walk the length of it, gives a sense of scale to the height of these fantastic trees.

Another way to understand the scale of the redwoods is to visit the house built entirely inside a log; kitchen - dining area, two single beds and a lounge area.  It was originally toured around America on the trailer upon which it still sits.  It is a little short on utility areas like laundry, bathroom and toilet but fascinating nevertheless.

Equally interesting is Mr Kellog's "Travel-log" truck, a sort of motorised caravan that also toured the States.  The entire body of the truck was hollowed out of a single log and mounted on a truck chassis.

Leaving Hwy 101 we took California 1 over a torturous route to the coast, the most fun driving route so far in the USA.

The day started at 50F, and as we finished the Avenue of the Giants suddenly shot up to 89F then as we headed out to the coast dropped rapidly back to 55F.

 152 miles today, total trip; 6796; States: California.