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Avenue of the Giants
Sep. 28th, 2010 02:26 pmIt's something I've wanted to do for years, visiting the Giant redwood trees a few hours north of San Francisco. Last weekend, we finally did it.
It was awesome, in the original sense of the word, jaw-droppingly awesome like the Pyramids are awesome, like the Taj Mahal is awesome, like Angkor Wat is awesome. The kind of place where age and scale feed into the experience in a way that you just can't capture in photographs.
We drove the Avenue of the Giants, a 31-mile stretch that used to be Highway 101 until they built the new 101 across it. It runs along the Eel River, and it's lined with groves of giant redwood trees, all 200-300 feet high. The numbers don't mean anything until you step out among them, and crane your neck seeking their tops. Some of the trees are two thousand to five thousand years old. They were young when the pyramids were under construction.
Some old trees have been turned into tourist attractions, complete with gift shops, with a rather cheesy old-time feel, left over from a less sophisticated era. They have a sense of authentic Americana, a sense of place that doesn't exist in the smart new gift-shops in tourist attractions in large cities. We drove through a couple of trees: The Shrine Tree, and the Chandelier tree (in the picture). We visited the one-log house, which felt like a primitive RV: it had a little kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom. We stopped at the Chimney Tree, a room in the base of a hollow tree, which had an opening on top, but was still alive. We also stopped at the Eternal Treehouse Cafe, the only food source we found along the drive. The tree-house itself is just another empty room in the base of what was once a giant tree (but was logged); the cafe, in a separate building, served pretty good sandwiches made on the spot by a friendly woman who was cook, server and cashier in one.
Quite surprisingly, we found an industrial building in an open space near the river. It was the Eel River Sawmill, Positively No Visitors. We wondered if it was grandfathered in; it looked extremely out of place. (A little Googling showed it was built in 1958, destroyed by the huge flood of 1964, rebuilt, but eventually closed and is now a clean-up site.)
The trees. They reminded me of Jurassic Park, of the Magic Faraway Tree in the Blyton books of my childhood, of the movie Avatar. Even though I'd never seen them before, they were filled with associations. It seemed like they were the distilled essence of Huge Impressive Wonderful trees. We stopped several times to hike through the redwoods, and boggled our minds each and every time.
It was awesome, in the original sense of the word, jaw-droppingly awesome like the Pyramids are awesome, like the Taj Mahal is awesome, like Angkor Wat is awesome. The kind of place where age and scale feed into the experience in a way that you just can't capture in photographs.We drove the Avenue of the Giants, a 31-mile stretch that used to be Highway 101 until they built the new 101 across it. It runs along the Eel River, and it's lined with groves of giant redwood trees, all 200-300 feet high. The numbers don't mean anything until you step out among them, and crane your neck seeking their tops. Some of the trees are two thousand to five thousand years old. They were young when the pyramids were under construction.
Some old trees have been turned into tourist attractions, complete with gift shops, with a rather cheesy old-time feel, left over from a less sophisticated era. They have a sense of authentic Americana, a sense of place that doesn't exist in the smart new gift-shops in tourist attractions in large cities. We drove through a couple of trees: The Shrine Tree, and the Chandelier tree (in the picture). We visited the one-log house, which felt like a primitive RV: it had a little kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom. We stopped at the Chimney Tree, a room in the base of a hollow tree, which had an opening on top, but was still alive. We also stopped at the Eternal Treehouse Cafe, the only food source we found along the drive. The tree-house itself is just another empty room in the base of what was once a giant tree (but was logged); the cafe, in a separate building, served pretty good sandwiches made on the spot by a friendly woman who was cook, server and cashier in one. Quite surprisingly, we found an industrial building in an open space near the river. It was the Eel River Sawmill, Positively No Visitors. We wondered if it was grandfathered in; it looked extremely out of place. (A little Googling showed it was built in 1958, destroyed by the huge flood of 1964, rebuilt, but eventually closed and is now a clean-up site.)
The trees. They reminded me of Jurassic Park, of the Magic Faraway Tree in the Blyton books of my childhood, of the movie Avatar. Even though I'd never seen them before, they were filled with associations. It seemed like they were the distilled essence of Huge Impressive Wonderful trees. We stopped several times to hike through the redwoods, and boggled our minds each and every time.
