From Benbow to Avenue of the Giants

Three trailers traveled to Benbow, camping along the Eel River.  Friday, the day of the tsunami from the horrific earthquake in Japan, was our departure day.  The news was full of the devastation in Japan, and the oncoming tsunami's impact on our coast--hitting Crescent City, Noyo, and Santa Cruz with damage-causing waves.  Crescent City, because of its shape, was particularly hard hit.  Despite this terrible news creating a pall across the world, the day itself was sunny with a few clouds, and a beautiful travel day.  Later, rain would start early on Saturday morning and last until we left Sunday.  Still, the weekend was fun and served a good purpose of testing out one of the trailers on its maiden trip.  The new trailer actually had a small leak which would not have been found had it not rained on our weekend get-a-away.

The RV park, shown at left in autumn, has pull-throughs which made it handy for all of us to setup--even Erich's 32-footer fit easily.  Judy took some pictures of our campsite and trailers, and some of these photos are posted here.   Four dogs were part of our group:  Tillie, Brody, Pancho, and Scooter.  All of the animals did well, even Tillie (above right) on her first time away from home in the trailer.  Emily's bike was soon unloaded on our arrival, and she biked around the park, thoroughly enjoying the ins-and-outs of the lanes.

Despite the weather, on the next day, we piled into two of our vehicles and drove north to the Avenue of the Giants.  Here, the beautiful Eel River parallels the old highway.  The river was running high and wild, a milky green in color.  We stopped first at the Visitor Center for the Humboldt Redwoods State Park.  The 53,000-acre Park has some of the world's most majestic ancient trees, with over 17,000 acres of old growth redwood groves.  These massive trees, some older than Christianity, were first set aside with the efforts of the Save the Redwood League back in 1917.   The Visitor Center has a pictorial history of the area from the first settlements forward, including pictures of the devastating 1964 flood.  Dioramas of wildlife and aquatic resources are only a few of the interesting and educational displays within the Center.

On the outside are equally informative signs and displays--including the one at the right of a cross-section of one of the older redwoods--although this one isn't as massive as many found in the Park.  The tree's rings have been dates, and key times in the chronology of the last 2000 years are shown in tabs on the rings.  The Center also has specimens of the other two redwoods--the Giant sequoia  and Meta sequoia (or the Dawn Redwood) a deciduous redwood native.  These trees are very localized now, but were once much more widespread 65 million years ago.  In those ancient times, both the dawn redwood and the coast redwood were widespread throughout the northern hempisphere.  Today, they have retreated to small outposts in Northern California (Coastal Redwood), China (the Dawn Redwood), and the Sierras (Giant Redwood).

After leaving the Visitor Center, we traveled further north to Founder's Grove, which has a lovely short hiking trail with interpretive signs starting at Founder's Tree.  However, the rain became heavy at that point, so we only walked a short distance along the trail.

Still, Founder's tree is impressive, and its top was far from view.  

We continued on our way, returning via the freeway to Garberville and a lunch at a family-run cafe.  It had Emily's favorite on the menu--chicken strips.  The meal was mezza mezza, but better dining was ahead!  That night we had barbecued hamburgers and had hoped to sit outside around Erich's fire pit, but the rain made an indoor cook-out more comfortable.  We stayed warm and dry inside Brad & Judy's comfy new trailer--twice dining around the U-shaped table.  Friday night was hot dogs, and Saturday night was hamburgers!  Delicious camping cuisine.