Giant Redwoods

PCH Day 8: We woke up to a foggy and overcast day. After breakfast we backtracked slightly to have a second look at Mendocino and the Russian Gulch National Park, just south of Fort Bragg. Mendocino is very quaint and "New Englandy" but a lovely setting, and somehow the mist added to the coastal atmosphere of the place. We found a shop selling hippy stuff - Jilly is now reliving her youth and becoming a hippy! Great clothes, but a shame they didn't have any men's stuff! We eventually started North again and on to the main event of the day: the giant redwood forests. We did the touristy bit and found a "drive-thru tree" then ventured on to the Avenue of the Giants, which is 30 miles of spectacularly huge redwood trees - amazing. We finally made it to Eureka, Ca, after stopping for a pizza in a small town that really was straight out of the movies - full of rednecks and what seemed like in-breds! A bit cruel I suppose but it certainly seemed that way. Everyone was very pleasant though and the pizza was good! Tomorrow - Oregon!

PCH Day 9: This morning was another grey and foggy start. We spent a pleasant  hour or so wandering around old town Eureka, another quaint and "New England" style town. There are some fantasticly ornate houses and old buildings - it must have been a very wealthy town in its heyday. Afterwards we headed north to today's destination, Brookings, Oregon. En route we passed through Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. We thought it was more impressive than the Avenue of the Giants, although not covering such a vast area. Some of the trees were humongous! Photos just cannot convey the enormity of these trees, they are simply awesome! It is only when you see one of us next to the tree do you get some sense of the scale, and even then you still can't really see it. In John Steinbeck's words:

"The redwoods once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always...from them comes silence and awe. The most irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect."

We had hoped to finish the day watching the sunset at Twin Rocks, Oregon, where in the words of Shawn Mullins, we wanted "to sit right here and watch the sun, disappear in to the Ocean" but sadly the fog came in so we just stared at a bank of fog for 10 mins while we imagined the sunset over Twin Rocks! To make up for that, we had a delicious meal in an excellent restaurant just next to the hotel. When we got back to the hotel, I discovered that we are actually nowhere near Twin Rocks, Oregon (Google maps misled me!) - it is actually 200 miles further north, so we might yet get to see the sunset there, weather permitting!