Day 16: The Redwoods
The penultimate day of our journey was more chaotic than we expected. Our use of the words “cursed,” “janky,” and “unhinged” had been high from the beginning but today, it shot through the roof.
The
greatest contributor to the trip’s “jankiness” were my shoes, which had failed
to dry in Oregon’s humid air. During Kelly’s first driving shift, I alternately
held up each shoe against the car’s vents and cranked up the air conditioning.
Once we had reached the scenic and slower drives in California’s redwoods, I
switched to simply holding one shoe out of the window at a time. This treatment
helped much more than the previous use of a hairdryer, which seems to have
damaged some of the fabric on my already worn shoes.
This entire
episode, however, did not turn out to be completely pointless. As I sat in the
car resting both shoes against the vents while waiting for Kelly to buy her
morning coffee, I noticed a significant difference in their wear. While the
soles of the left shoe were worn down in the front, the soles of the right shoe
were worn down in the back. I realised that this must have been caused by an
injury I sustained while hiking in the spring. Thus, this silly mishap combined
with Kelly’s equally silly coffee addiction might have produced a profound
effect: I will be working on fixing the way I walk.
Crossing
into California was like entering a whole new country. Our car was funnelled
through what appeared to be a customs booth, and for the first time, signage
warned us that speed limits would be enforced by radars. The next day, we would
also realise that we had once and for all entered the land of expensive gas.
While we saw gas as cheap as 3.5 dollars a gallon in Kansas, some of the gas we
would drive past in San Francisco went for double that price. Having only a
very vague idea of how much a gallon is, I did some calculations on the back of
a receipt only to find that even the highest price was comparable to average
prices in Europe.
We drove to
the seventh and last UNESCO site we would see on this road trip: the Redwood
National and State Parks. We stopped by three: Jedediah Smith Redwoods State
Park, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and Humboldt Redwoods State Park. We
spent most time walking around the first, as the path towards the trailhead of
Stout Grove was somewhat rocky, and Kelly did not want to try her luck after
our experiences in Montana. My favourite part, though, was simply driving along
the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway in Prairie Creek and Avenue of the Giants in
Humboldt. Sometimes, the sunlight filtered through the trees, while at other
times, its rays descended through a curtain of silvery mist.
As we left
the park, we encountered a stark reminder of the fragility of it all. The
visibility worsened and up ahead, we could see the wisps of grey clouds.
Driving closer, we saw a small plane circling over a cover of smoke, and
finally came upon a row of fire trucks holding up the cars going in the
opposite direction. It was a forest fire. I remembered the words of a ranger in
Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, who told us that redwoods are effectively
fire resistant, but they were of little consolation when I thought about all
the other forests at risk.
That night, we ate dinner and found lodging in Ukiah. Our drive was 312 miles, bringing our total mileage to 5668.
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