Week 47 : Klamath to Crescent City

"I'm fed up of trees", I said to Amy as we walked north out of Klamath in the general direction of .... well, if truth be told, in the general direction of a lot more trees. We had been walking for what seemed like a lifetime. In our youth there had been Southern California beaches and cities, San Francisco shops and bars. But since we had come of age there had been trees. Big trees, wide trees, straight trees, gay trees. This United States was supposed to be a land of contrasts and natural splendours: a land of deserts, mountains, prairies and cities. But as far as I could tell it was a land of trees.  Amy pulled me to the side of the road so I could look down on the fine estuary of the Klamath River as if to say, "look there, it's a river not a tree, so shut up moaning" But all I noticed were the tree-lined river banks : like someone visiting the Louvre to look at the picture frames.

I cheered up a bit when we got to Requa a few miles further up Highway 101. Here is the historic Requa Inn and I am always a sucker for an inn. Dr Johnson once said that "the tavern chair is the throne of human felicity" and who was I to argue. So I went inside and pulled up a throne and ordered a drink.  Amy was less than pleased as she was tied up to a wooden post outside. The Requa Inn is one of those dog-unfriendly establishments. Amy suggested trying our usual trick of smuggling her in under my coat but she is too fat for that and I half suspect that she has picked up a few Northern Californian fleas of late. Her next suggestion was that we boycott the place, but decent inns are few and far between around here. So she was tied to a post with a bowl of water. 

Refreshed and revived - well I was refreshed and revived and Amy was sulking - we pressed on until we reached the coast at False Klamath Cove. The name seemingly is derived from the fact that early sailors used to mistake the headland for the mouth of the Klamath River. The shore here is strewn with bits of old timber and what might look like - if you had a vivid imagination - old bones. Amy had a good sniff and declared that they were nothing but sea-smoothed branches and I suppose dogs should know about such things. We played a game as we walked along the beach as twilight approached : guessing what kind of strange animals could have given rise to such weird and wonderful bones. I suggested to Amy that one great old log was part of the breast bone of a giant chicken and she got quite excited about the prospect of this for some time. Ah, simple pleasures.

We stayed the night at the stunning Redwood National Park Hostel which is part of Hosteling International. I couldn't find any rules about dogs not being allowed but to be on the safe side I booked her in as my travelling companion and went for the more expensive option of a private room rather than a dormitory.

After we left the Hostel it was serious trees for the rest of the week. Big trees, wide trees, straight trees .... hang on, we've been here before. I said this phrase to Amy on numerous occasions over the next few days, but we hadn't been there before, they were just different trees that happened to all look the same. It was a relief at the end of the week when we came into site of Crescent City. A city, a real city (well a kind of little city, but what the hell). I would give myself a few days to enjoy city life and then press on. Just a few miles further north and we would at long last cross the State line and enter Oregon. "Do they have trees in Oregon?" I asked Amy as we sat on the harbour wall at Crescent City. She just yawned and ignored me.

Week 46 : Orick To Klamath

Leaving Orick behind, Amy and I entered Redwood National Park. Or at least I think we did, it was all very confusing. Redwood National Park was established in 1968 with the joint objective of protecting the old growth coast redwood trees and also promoting tourism in the area. There were a number of State Parks already in existence and these became partly incorporated into the new National Park, but they also retained their individual entities. Add to all this that the area was later designated a World Heritage Site and, even more recently, an International Biosphere Reserve, and you can see how confusing it gets. At any one time you might be in a National Park, a State Park a Heritage Site or a Biosphere Reserve, or all four. The giant trees must get awfully mixed up and it is a miracle that they manage to grow up so tall and straight. We had been provided with a map which marked all the different parks, sites and reserves in different shades of green but eventually Amy decided that this was the cause of even more confusion so she chewed it up.

As we walked along I tried to interest her in the dominant fauna and launched into yet another lecture about Redwood trees. "There are three members of the redwood family", I told Amy : "coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) of the California coastal fog belt, giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) of the Sierra Nevada, and dawn redwoods (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) of central China". "Which is the largest?", I felt Amy wanting to ask me (sometimes I have to prompt some of her questions as she is not over loquacious in the mornings). "Good question", I answered obligingly. "Coast Redwoods, like these", I pointed to a convenient tree we were passing at the time, "are younger, lighter, but taller, whereas giant sequoias are older, broader and heavier". She looked a little unsure about my explanation. "Think of it this way", I told her, "Guy is taller than you" - Guy is Amy's Great Dane friend - "but you are fatter". Following that little bon mot, she didn't speak to me for the rest of the day.

Not that I minded that much as that particular day we were walking along the Newton P Drury Scenic Parkway, a ten-mile paved road which runs through old-growth redwood forest in the State Park (or the National Park or whatever). As Amy kept a silent look-out for the ever-present Roosevelt elk I mused on the subject of Newton P Drury. If you are the kind of person who wants to leave a lasting memorial when you finally quit the mortal sod, you can do worse than becoming a State or National Park Director. In lesser professions you might get a gold-coloured watch when you retire and a short paragraph in the company newsletter when you die, if you are a State or National Parks Man (or woman) you can almost guarantee a couple of small forests, a woodland glade, and a brace of campsites being named in your honour. 

Old Newton B did quite well out of his ten years as Director of the National Parks Service in the 1940s, he had two redwood forest groves, a 10,000 foot mountain peak and a Scenic Parkway named after him. "What do you think they will name after me?", I asked Amy as we walked along in the shade of the massive redwood trees. She didn't reply - she was still not talking to me - but she stopped and had a good sniff at a steaming pile of elk dung. It said it all somehow.

Towards the end of the week we rejoined Highway 101 and experienced the thrill we always felt when we crossed a County Line. Here we were in the last county in California - Del Norte County - which as well as being the most northerly county is also one of the smallest of the rural counties. During my time in California I had become something of a County bore, carrying around with me a host of facts and figures about some of the more obscure counties that people just did not want to know about. Over the last few months I had liberally given forth from this fascinating cornucopia of knowledge only to discover that people had the habit of walking away from me when I was in mid-sentence. However, I had discovered that Amy could not use this gambit as she was attached to me by a long length of unbreakable twine, and so I once again attempted to educate her. Although this is now Del Norte County (and I should point out Amy that if you want to be taken as a local you should not pronounce the final "e"), it used to be Klamath County and before that it was part of Trinity County. I would like to pretend that Amy fained interest, but - truth be told - she didn't. But if I stopped talking when people didn't show interest, I would have led a quiet life. I continued. "There are only 30,000 people living in the County which makes it about the same size as a half-decent housing estate, but the population density is 27 people per square mile which makes it twenty times less crowded than England". I had just launched into a detailed analysis of voting figures in the County - it was, for example, one of the rare places on earth where more people voted for Senator McCain than Barak Obama in the recent presidential elections - when I noticed Amy trying to chew through her lead. I decided that she had suffered enough so I stopped talking and started whistling instead.

At the end of the week Amy and I whistled our way across the Klamath River and into the little town of Klamath. We were stopped in our tracks - and halted in mid-verse - by an extraordinary sight : a giant fiberglass carving of a bearded logger and strutting blue oxen. Amy gave a low whistle and I barked : or maybe it was the other way around, you get confused after walking through a redwood forest for a week. Which ever way around it was, we stopped to investigate. The statue, it turns out, is a 49 foot representations of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox : heroes of American folklore who did things like create the Grand Canyon (when Paul got fed up with carrying his axe and dragged it along the ground) and cut down the biggest trees in the forest without breaking into a sweat. 

Why exactly these fibre glass statues were in Klamath I wasn't sure but they were standing next to the entrance of something called "The Trees of Mystery Park" so I paid the $11 admission charge (reduced rate for Seniors, dogs get in for free) and had a look around. What we found inside is what the Guidebook calls a "8/10ths of a mile groomed interpretive trail through the awe-inspiring Redwoods of Northern California". I was not sure what a "groomed interpretive trail" was and Amy was getting a little agitated - she thought I had said a "groomed interlaced tail" - but it turned out to be nothing more that a walk passed a series of trees which had names like the Brotherhood Tree, the Cathedral Tree and the Candelabra Tree. It was all very jolly, but the best bit was the 1,500 foot Skytrail cable car ride. As Amy watched the little cable cars lurch into the sky I saw a look of pure panic on her furry face. The one salvation, I am sure she felt, was that there was little chance that dogs would be allowed to ride the Skytrail. How wrong she was. She barked and whined the whole 9 minute journey, but once her four feet were back on solid earth she remained remarkably well behaved for the rest of the day.

It was with a obedient and quiet dog that I sat outside the Klamath Shoping Centre cafe at the end of the week, looking back on our walk ... and planning another week ahead.

Orick : The Bigfoot Capital of America

Sunday 25th January 2009

By Sunday, Amy and I had arrived at our destination, the small town of Orick. The town - if this row of roadside shops can be called a town - clusters around the point where the Redwood Highway spans the Redwood Creek. There's an awful lot of redwood around here and we are only a short walk from Redwood National Park. But in Orick the Redwood tends to be carved into odd shapes and standing outside a variety of roadside stores. Amy found some very odd shapes and after a preliminary sniff, she drew my attention to them. "Ah Bigfoot", I said with my usual pretense of ancient wisdom, wisdom so ancient the Wikipedia ink is still not dry.  "Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch", I recited to a patently uninterested dog, "is an alleged ape-like creature purportedly inhabiting forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Bigfoot is usually described as a large, hairy, bipedal humanoid". Amy started barking, but it appeared to be more of an indication of my mental state that a warning against a hairy, bipedal humanoid. The number of large wooden apes lining the street was an indication that Orick is sometimes called the Bigfoot Capital of America : there have been more reported sightings around Orick than almost anywhere else. One feels slightly sorry for Orick : when American small towns gather together for a drink after work and start boasting that they are the World Cucumber Capital or the American Breeze-block Capital, all Orick can claim is that within its borders a lot of people didn't actually see something that doesn't exist. 

Orick does have a good bar and diner however. Hawg Wild Bar and Grill is a renowned bikers stopover, but despite having six legs rather than two wheels, Amy and I were made welcome. Amy socialised with the bar-owners' dog whilst I took a tour of some of the weird and wonderful bikes on display. On the grill a couple of Elk Burgers were cooking and in my hand a glass of ice-cold beer was chilling me out. Time to sit down and work out where on earth we are going to go to next week.

LINKS

Hawg Wild Grill and Bar

Orick Chamber of Commerce

Wikipedia - Bigfoot

Stone Lagoon

Thursday 22nd January 2009

Amy has become a keen fan of spit-walking and has insisted that we walk along the coast this week. After my fearful transit of the Big Lagoon barrier, I was marched past - rather I was pulled past - Dry Lagoon and Stone Lagoon, and I have still got Freshwater Lagoon to look forward to. Nevertheless, I did manage to insist on a quick trip inland to get a look at Stone Lagoon Schoolhouse, an iconic one-roomed, red-painted, wooden schoolhouse of the type that once could be found throughout rural America. It is well worth taking the detour to see the school, it looks quite wonderful set against the dense forest and with the ever-present coastal mist sweeping down from the hills. It is usually surrounded by a grazing herd of Roosevelt elk which, to my mind, just add to the overall impression of rural idyll.

Amy didn't share my appreciation of the elk, nor -unusually for her - did she try and chase them. She must have had a frightening experience in a previous life involving elk because she adopted that cat-like, low-slung posture she reserves for when she is scared out of her wits. I ignored her fear as I was determined to get my own back for my hair-raising walk along the sand spit. "There is a distinctive school bell", I told her as I read from the guide, "but the best way to hear it is to go onto the school website and press the button marked "school bell". I was slightly disappointed with this, somehow it didn't seem right. Here we were having virtually walked all the way to Stone Lagoon and we were being advised that we could get the genuine experience by pressing a button on a computer. Seemed like cheating to me.

LINKS

Stone Lagoon School House Museum

Redwood Trails At Stone Lagoon

Big Lagoon

Tuesday 20th January 2009

"It's a stretch of sea water separated from the sea by a low sandbank or coral reef", I said to my dog Amy as we walked north of Agate Beach towards Big Lagoon. We would be having close encounters with four lagoons this week so I thought it advisable to explain the word to Amy as she often had difficulty with complex concepts such as "sit", "stay", and "stop chasing that seagull". I might as well have saved my breath as she took little notice and continued to pull me along the sands even though I protested that our chosen route took us along the east side of Big Lagoon up the great Redwood Highway. Amy had different ideas, she wanted us to walk up the narrow strip of sand and shingle that separated the wild Pacific from the still Lagoon waters. "Hang on, Amy, I'm not sure it is safe", I said as she dragged me north. "Perhaps you can't get through", I tried. She pressed on. "Perhaps it's private property", I declared. She quickened her pace. "Perhaps dogs aren't allowed", said I throwing it my trump card. She trumped my trump so we kept heading up the sand spit.

According to the guidebooks, gold-seekers swarmed into this area in 1849 when discoveries were made along the Klamath and Trinity rivers. Prospectors attempted to mine the sand spits, but managed to extract very little gold despite considerable effort. It was only when we were a mile or two up the spit that I got to the paragraph which warned that particular care was needed as several times each winter the lagoon barrier is breached by waves. From there onwards I kept my eyes neurotically on the waves to our left, imagining with each incoming wave that the narrow strip of sand was getting narrower. Amy seemed relaxed about it and happily ran around searching for gold. By the time we passed the half-way mark it was me pressing ahead and Amy being dragged along in my wake. When we eventually got to the northern end of the sand spit she stopped and gave my one of her looks. It was as if to say, "what's all the fuss about, it was a lagoon, separated from the sea by a low sandbank .... ".

LINKS

Humboldt Lagoons State Park

Week 45 : Patrick's Point To Orick

You will recall that Amy and I are speeding north, heading for the County Line having illegally allowed a dog (Amy) to sleep in a hotel room which did not welcome pets. Although we won't quite make the County Line in the week ahead, our route will take us through Humboldt Lagoons State Park. By next weekend we should arrive at the town of Orick .... unless the pet police catch us first.

Patrick's Point State Park

"If there is a dog you particularly fancy, you could get married", I said to Amy as we walked from the Patrick's Point Inn where we had spent the previous night along the path to Wedding Rock. I was wasting my breath as Amy rarely answers me. Also she was sulking as Patricks Point Inn had displayed one of those annoying "Sorry, No Pets Please" signs hanging in its window, so Amy had to be smuggled into my room surreptitiously. Hopefully she left a good doggy-smell to permeate the room, and equally hopefully we will be across the County Line before this is discovered.

Wedding Rock really is used for weddings and one can only admire the determination of couples - not to mention the sure-footed courage of their bridesmaids, ushers, sisters, brothers and maiden aunts - who traverse the rocky staircase up to the rock. This spot has been popular for weddings ever since the original caretaker of Patrick's Point State Park was married there in the 1930s. The State Park website says "it's a uniquely special place to start the journey through life together--a rock-solid foundation for wedded bliss". There were no weddings taking place on the day we visited, and Amy hadn't come up with a suitable mate, and therefore we took the path back to Agate Beach to see if we could pick up a fortune.

We found nothing so we contented ourselves with sitting in the shade of a giant Redwood tree and planning out our walk for the coming week.

LINKS

Wedding Rock : Redwood Coast Website

Patrick's Point State Park