Redwoods Day 1

Leaving Weed, CA at 9:15am well ahead of schedule. An hours drive to Redding,CA and leaving interstate for 2 lane roads. More twists and sharp turns for the 140 miles (3-4 hours just drive time for that 140 miles on route 299) from Redding to Arcata than Loveland, CO along the Big Thompson to Estes Park- makes that drive seem like a cake walk.
Several great rest stops along the way- Josh and I have lunch at one of them. Little towns along the 299 route here have life sized wooden carvings of bigfoot on the side of the road (like the bear carvings we see so often) some tall and wookie looking and some more short and rotund. The biggest collection is in the town of Willow Creek where they have a Bigfoot museum - (I didn’t see this museum part until looking on the map later that night- darn!)
The temp in Weed at 9am was 81, 85 degrees in Redding an hour later & south. Stayed in the mid 80’s until about a half hour from the coast, then the temp dropped to 61 in a flash! Sunny skies were replaced by clouds that obscured the treetops: they were so low.
Arrive at 2:22 pm in Arcata, CA visitor info office.
Mileage: 3335.5 (and our hotel address tonight is 3535!)
Get ideas of the forest layout and ranger stations.




Then drive up the exciting Route 101 north! Stop at the entrance to the Redwood National & State Park - which is where the ocean meets the park. Jeff gets out and attunes with the ocean and waves here. Around the time of touching the cool water and seeing the low clouds, Jeff connects deeper with the sea and sky.




Then onto the "Lady Bird Johnson Grove" of redwoods. Some were 12’ across and 200-300+ feet high. The forest is magical. And 52 degrees in mid afternoon! Ranger said that when the town of Redding gets that hot, which it has been all summer, it pulls the water in from the ocean and blankets the forest here. Some of the trees are well over 1,000 years old. Their bark is up to 1 foot thick. Beautiful rainforest effect: misty, cool and an air of something primeval -before the advent of humans here.
Drive up to another Visitor office for input and trail info. Then drive back an hour or so to Arcata to spend the night.

Ashland, OR

There is a wonderful park in the town of Ashland that people from all over come to enjoy. There are people picnicking, playing the violin, lounging on the grass, kids playing on cool equipment. A creek runs through it with duck ponds and people walking through the stream like it was a walkway.






In downtown area is a historic and high end hotel and nice small businesses on the streets. NO CHAIN STORES to be found here except Starbucks!



A natural spring serves the town. It has many minerals in it and tastes a bit like an alka-selzer becasue the water in naturally alkaline. In the middle of town they have fountains where you can try this water. (regular city water is treated and does not have the same taste but I believe it has most of the mineral content.) The fountains run non-stop and have a 'ball of water' at the top that you drink instead of a stream of water. See 1" white ball on top of the dark 'fountain head' pipe, this is the water bubbling with air.

The people are friendly and down to earth. Feels a bit like Boulder CO.

Yreka Gold! 3 million!

So Jeff & Josh head out for Yreka (pronounced 'why-reka')CA on their way to Ashland OR. Here they stop at a small town court house, with the usual suspects just outside of any courthouse. 5 feet from the front door and through a standard checkpoint is around 3 million dollars of gold and gold nuggets- called "The Million Dollar Display" in the 90's - it has since tripled its value. All in a glass case about 10 ft wide. Amazing and it all came from this county. Actually over 300 million dollars (by todays standard) have come from this one county, including digs today.

Day of Rest

Even God rested on the 7th day. So did Jeff & Josh. We spent the day integrating new found energy from the Mountain out our window. Catching up on the blog after 7 days of no writing, sleeping in, etc. Josh did his favorite 'activity' watching Top Gear episodes on You Tube.
Venture out only for food...and a brilliant sunset show.

JC leaves for CT, Josh & Jeff paddle wheel

Jocelyne gets a call around 7am local time. Her father not doing well. She decides to fly back and see him. She books a flight out of San Francisco about 5+ hours away. She leaves the boys by 11 am.

Josh and Jeff decide to go out on one of the local lakes called Siskiyou, about 10-15 minutes outside of the town of Mt. Shasta. There at the popular beach for families they rent a paddle wheel boat at Josh's insistence. He wanted to try it out for the first time. About half way out Josh started using only one leg and hence recieved the name 'one legged lebowitz' and lots of pirate talk for the rest of the tour. (Josh alternated legs) Great view of the lake here, kids swam and boated like adults. Fun place! Water clean and cool.

Lake Shasta caverns

3 J’s go to Shasta lake caverns. Boat tour across Lake Shasta (45 min drive form town of Mt. Shasta) for 15 minutes.

Upon landing we took a tour bus up 800 ft to the caverns. For an hour tour we go through the caves and we all enjoy it. I take lots of pics. Moist and in the 70’s inside with the humidity, even though the real temp was in the 50’s.

Great living rocks like stalactites and spaghetti formations. Some quite large- one caverns was 180' high inside and loaded with formations.

On the road up, squirrels have become smart and roll pine cones in front of the tires to crush them and thus reveal the pine nuts. Tour operators decide to avoid the cones to save their tires. Squirrels step up and roll out cones right before the moving vehicles can swerve.

Shasta Jeff alone, Josh & Jocelyne pyramid

Jeff gets up early and hikes up to around the 10,000 ft mark by himself going up to 'horse camp' and the natural spring there. He brings a taste down to Josh and Jocelyne later. At 'horse camp' there are families and elderly people who hiked the 1.6 miles up to taste the water or base camp for a hike the next day to the summit. Great stone cabin up here. 2 weeks earlier the cabin and spring had 5+ feet of snow on and around them.
Jocelyne and Josh stay in town and go to the Crystal Tones store and play more crystal bowls. The shopkeeper plays some new bowls for them. Later the dynamic duo go to a pyramid near the mountain for some inspiration/guidance/attunements.