On the road

It’s Memorial Day weekend, I get Monday off, and it’s time we saw more of the state, so we packed up the car and hit Highway 101, headed north to redwood country. It’s incredibly beautiful up here, all misty and primeval, with these gigantic trees, older than Jesus, standing guard over the deer and black bears. (We’ve seen deer; no bears.) Some are 2400 years old, and even the “small” guys lining the highway are 400 to 600 years old.
Some snapshots of our weekend thus far:
* We paid $5 to drive through a giant redwood called the Chandelier, although actually it was more of a candelabra. I jumped out of the car and walked through the trunk, tapping the “ceiling” on my way, so I could photograph Tim driving through, with his head hanging out the window like a puppy.
* I was sitting on a smooth log, eating a Crunch ice cream bar when a little girl squeezed on beside me.
“Look at my ice cream,” she said, pushing her multi-colored, stripy lump of little-girl heaven under my nose.
“Wow, that looks great,” I replied.
“Look at my tongue.” She poked out her red and blue tongue.
“Cool.”
At this point her parents showed up, mom holding a very new baby wrapped in a yellow blanket, and my friend was led away. Clearly, the baby had messed up her sweet deal at home and she was looking for attention anywhere she could get it.
* Stopped the car to walk into the Chimney redwood, with a trunk hollowed by a long-ago fire. This tree has its own electrics and a guest book.
* Drove down the Avenue of Giants, 30-odd miles of, um, giant redwoods. Gorgeousness, but we had to stop before we got to the end because there had been a mudslide that the highway patrol had not bothered to signpost before we were practically upon it.
* Ferndale, USA. This is a teeny Victorian town which, rather than being a preserved under glass like a dead butterfly, is a living community that just happens to have great buildings. There is a diner with a long, wooden counter at which a local cop was drinking coffee when I peeked through the window; bank with box-office style booths for each teller; all kinds of candy shoppes, and antiques shops and a blacksmith's, all beautifully maintained and some decked out in red, white and blue bunting in honor of Memorial Day; and a miniature pink house built in 1995 as a fundraiser for maintaining some of the Victorian beauties in the main street, which was adorable except for the dog doodie on the tiny front porch. Oh, and there just happened to be a parade on as we drove into town, with a French horn and all the trimmings.
* Reading the local paper at our blandy-bland motel over muffins and crapola coffee, we learned that “Izzy” Osbourne and the AC/DC chicks’ tribute band, Thundherstruck, were on their way to Humboldt County. As were Joan Jett and the Black Hearts. Sadly, I think it was the real Joan Jett. Oh how the mighty have fallen, rather like ancient redwoods. . .