(Note: for the next 8
weeks we are off the find-a-town-to-call-home part of the trip and just
enjoying a long summer vacation.
Therefore these write-ups will be more descriptive rather than evaluative.
)
I just finished reading Mark Arax’s collection of essays
about the lives and times of various Californians called “West of the
West”. The title is attributed to Teddy Roosevelt
who once exclaimed, "When I am in California, I am not in the West, I am
west of the West”. The idea of “The
West” – capital T on The – conjures up images of open plains, cowboys,
stagecoaches, etc. Even more
contemporarily, if you ask someone for their imagery of the west they will
describe scenes that are more Wyoming or even Texas, than the state that is
truly as west as it gets in the lower 48.
California is a lot of things, but it is not typically
western. On our 5 month journey up the state
from San Diego to Eureka, we’ve gained an enlightenment on just how many different
places California can be. Coastal
deserts, palm oases, urban jungles, long sandy surfing beaches, foggy shores,
fertile valleys, rolling winelands, granite peaks, volcanoes, and ancient
forests. We’ve seen snow, and rain, and
month-long sunshine. But nothing
prepared us for this last bit of the trip.
It’s a funny thing that when people talk of “Northern
California” they mean San Francisco (vs Los Angeles). Take out your map, you’ll see that San
Francisco is only 2/3 up the coast – wouldn’t that make it Central
California? There is this whole chunk,
possibly the size of the lower 3 states in New England, or even South Carolina,
which very few people know anything about. If California is west of the west, we were north of the north for this last part of our Californian Adventure.
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| Yosemite Falls as seen from a gentle raft |
To the far eastern boundary, you find the mighty Yosemite
national park. I always knew of this
park, but confusing it with Yellowstone, I couldn’t tell you where it was or
what it was famous for. After a bit of
research we learned that the park was set aside early as a state park long
before the national park system even existed.
The bulk of its 3.5 million visitors a year spend their time in the tiny
7 square mile Yosemite valley. The
valley is carved in a hollow of granite – a single slab of granite. If you could strip away the ground and trees
around the cliffs of the famed Half Dome and El Capitan, you’d find a 300 mile
long, single piece of granite. Even with
our research completed, the experience of awe as you stand in this valley cannot
be expected. It is the backdrop of your
childhood 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles left, right, and center around you. The air is clearer, the sky is bluer, and
that granite…oh boy. 300 miles of
granite – how many kitchen counter tops is that exactly?
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| Lassen Peak in mid June at 8500 feet |
Heading northwest from Yosemite, you’ll find another
National Park at Lassen Volcanic. Never
heard of it? I’m not surprised. It’s a little bit out of the way, at high
snow covered elevation, and one of those places that you don’t do much other
than to drive thru. Lassen itself is a
volcano that had a bunch of eruptions between 1907-1921. It was made a national park in 1916 – my
hypothesis is that they were afraid of it and didn’t want anybody living out
there. In any case the place is still
very active and amongst its claims to fame are the existence of all types of
volcano – plug, shield, cinder and strato – but don’t ask me to explain the
differences. Another claim to fame is the Bumpass Hell thermal area which is
supposed to be an incredibly scenic area of boiling mudpits and steaming
fumaroles. Sadly so deep is the snow
that the access hike to Bumpass Hell is only open after mid July and we were
there too early. You can’t walk down
over the snow because it obscures the marked pathway and you just might fall
into a pit of boiling acid – I’m therefore perfectly satisfied to see the
pictures online and skip the adventure myself.
From Lassen we headed down, from 70 degree temps to soaring
110 degree temps, and west, along California 299, the scenic byway that traces
the Trinity River through the Trinity Alps.
After passing through the valley floor, home to a great percentage of
the world’s fruit bowl, you climb up and down through countless ghost towns
left behind after the gold rush. Only
once you go through the last pass does the temperature change again, with that
part of the northern California coast never getting much warmer than 65
degrees.
Reaching the coast, we find ourselves in Humboldt
County. Arax writes about the people of
Humboldt County deep in the redwoods three hours north of San Francisco. Humboldt Bay, in the Victorian Seaside town
of Eureka, (did you even know California had a victorian seaside town?) was
only accessed / found around 1850.
Explorers knew there was a bay there, but couldn’t find it by sea. It was only when the gold rushers moved in by
land that they properly found it. (Get
it? Eureka!) There are very few bays
along the Pacific Coast, so it made sense that Humboldt Bay would get settled
and become a major logging town for export.
With 96% of the trees gone by about 1990, the logging business
disintegrated over night. What would
these people turn to for their next business opportunity?
Two major historical events shaped the answer to that
question. The first was in the late 60s when
the summer of love exiles left San Francisco to go do hippie things in the
woods. The local (redneck) loggers
didn’t mind them…there was enough land/space to go around. Everyone tells stories of hidden marijuana
groves throughout the redwood forests – stumble upon these at your peril. Their operations were small, sourcing only
what they needed to consume themselves – rarely creating a cash crop for wider
distribution. But that changed in recent
times, with the 2nd historical event that has shaped the economy of
Humboldt County – legalized medical marijuana.
Today all those ex loggers have joined the hippies and have started to
grow something green that matures far earlier than those ancient redwoods. We now see a modern commercial marijuana
farmer. Technically the law states that
each person can only grow 25 plants. But
grow those indoors and you get 6 harvests a year vs the 1 harvest a year of the
outdoors growth. Suddenly you’re looking
at an easy $1 million or more even under the legal specifications of the
law. Drive through town and you’ll see
those cute little victorian homes now have a minor renovation – you aren’t able
to see through the first floor windows – for these homes are now grow rooms.
Boarded up, shaded or otherwise blocking out the natural sun, these places have
their electricity dials buzzing.
According to Arax, as many as 1 in 5 houses in the county is a grow
house. The hardware stores and garden
centers are chock a block with hydrophonic fertilizers , soils and
supplies. It’s all very ‘wink wink’ with
their exhibits showing how to grow tomato plants, but everyone knows what everyone
is doing.
When Andy and I visited Eureka we expected to see little old
ladies on antiquing missions oohing and ahhing at shop windows. What we actually saw was a community of
dreadlocked grungy types on skateboards smoking away on pipes in the middle of
the street. We were in town for 2 days
and never saw a single policeman or police car.
When we walked into the Lost Coast brewpub, a hush fell on the crowded
room. . .we were not from around here and everybody knew it. We got the feeling that police cars are no
longer necessary. Justice is served up local style. You stay over there and I’ll stay over
here. It’ll be interesting to see when
and if the gangs come in. Maybe they are
already there.
As you drive out of Eureka you follow the 101 up the redwood
coast. Pictures cannot do these trees
their justice. It is where the forest
scenes of Stars Wars were filmed. It’s
full of kitschy tourist stops – avoid the tempting Trees of Mystery stop, there
was not much to see there. There is a
National Park there, but I had read that the real awe inspiring sights were in
the Jedediah Smith state park. Driving
through both, I have to agree. Maybe
it’s the more rugged dirt road that forces you to slow down, maybe it was the
way the rare sun dripped through the trees, but for us Jedediah Smith was the
crown jewel.
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| These trees actually make our car look tiny! |
Not far after exiting the mighty redwoods you approach the
state border with Oregon. They should
put a rest area in there, a place for voyagers to gaze back on California and
wonder at the state’s marvels. You’d
have thought 5 months would be more than enough to soak of the state’s
riches. As we crossed that border we
both agreed that 5 months was way too short.
California we are in love, and we will be back.
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| A State full of riches |
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