Iron Fist

One during the day:

and one at night:

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OR

Yet Another Marginally Interesting Recap of Events Over a Week Old

OR

A Bunch of My Pictures Because It’s Easier than Writing

You would have seen the Hulk!

Or Jabba the Hut!

Or giant bugs promising prizes!

Or life-sized props from upcoming movies!

Or renowned comic book artists!

But mostly you would have seen a lot of dudes who were into comic books wearing deliriously happy smiles, for one reason or another.

You can see all the rest of my Comic-Con photos on Flickr.

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The final leg of my journey (yes, the past few posts have all been describing one day) involved me staying the night in Eureka, California. This was probably not the greatest decision I’ve ever made. My draw in coming here was that I’d wanted to explore the Humboldt Bay area, which I’d passed through some years before but didn’t get a chance to look around. Also, I was hoping they’d have a decent beach and I’d be able to go swimming. Alas, I didn’t arrive until the sun was almost down and decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to go out in the ocean after dark. Still, I had a decent dinner at the Lost Coast Brewery and got a chance to drive around a bit.

I’m sure there must be nice parts of Eureka somewhere, but the parts that I saw were kind of dumpy. There was an “Old Town” area with a lot of really nice Victorian houses, perhaps the ritziest and well known of which is the Carson Mansion, featured above, which is known far and wide for being so over the top with its Victorianess that other, lesser mansions weep at their own inadequacy. Overall, I wasn’t terribly impressed, though. If I had to do it all over again I would have just spent two nights in Crescent City.

I got back on the road by seven the next morning, heading north. The miraculously clear skies I’d had for the one day of my touring around and taking pictures was gone, and I had rain pouring down pretty much the entire way back home. I passed a yet another sign that over-delivered on the way back: upon seeing ‘ELK MEADOW’ I made a sharp turn, and sure enough was rewarded with a meadow, and elk:

And that’s about it. I got back on the road, stopping once for coffee in Crescent City and another time for gas in Woodburn, but other than that I drove straight home. That was my vacation: a single glorious day of sunshine and ocean and old-growth redwood trees and armies of elk, bracketed by long stretches of driving on either side. I’m not complaining. I had fun exploring the California north coast for a day.

Now I guess I’ll have to get back to writing again, instead of just posting pictures all the time. Eh.

(The photo set is all finished now, if you want to get a visual recap.)

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I have always been one of those people who would get disappointed when on a trip and not getting what was promised to me by a roadside sign. ‘CURVES AHEAD’ usually delivered, but ‘Now Entering SNOW ZONE’ almost never did (a hazard of driving over mountains in July, I suppose). ‘DANGER: FALLING ROCKS’ has yet to yield a cascade of falling stones all across the highway, and ‘BRAZILIAN HOT WAX’ has — well, that’s another story, really.

THE POINT IS: when I got back on the 101, heading south for Humboldt Bay as the day escaped me, I passed a sign that said ‘ELK CROSSING AHEAD NEXT 2 MILES’, and I didn’t even bother to gear myself up for disappointment. “Pfeh,” I said, “elk,” and then a minute or two later I found myself saying, “Holy shit! ELK!”

Just right there. Just that close. Eating on the side of the road by a traffic sign. I pulled my car over to the shoulder to stop and stare, mouth hanging open in awe like - well, like a tourist, I guess. They were just THERE, suddenly, grazing along the side of the road, mostly oblivious to us but every now and then looking up at we humans as if to say, “Hey, buddy, what’s the big deal? You ain’t got nothin’ else to do?”

After several minutes of internal debate which concluded with me deciding that trying to pet one and make it my friend was probably a bad idea, if only because my hotel probably wouldn’t be very understanding about the last minute addition of a roommate, I got back on the freeway and kept heading south, only to discover that the original sign had OVERdelivered, and there were elk beyond just the two miles that they’d promised. As I neared Humboldt Lagoon, squinting into the setting sun, I came around a curve and saw that there were a number of cars pulled over onto the shoulder. Just on the hunch that this might mean more elk, I pulled over along with them, and got out of my car to look at the herd of Roosevelt elk grazing in a field next to the road.

There were easily fifty elk, spread out over the entire field. Not many bothered to look at us this time. No doubt they’d given up wondering why it was that we rushed back and forth along that road all the time, only occasionally stopping to marvel at the beautiful land they spent their every day in.

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After the hidden beach, my next destination was down the 101 at the Trees of Mystery, where I was greeted by a gigantic statue of Paul Bunyan, who is either wearing a black fleece undershirt or else is showing more chest hair than I should ever want to own in this or any other lifetime. I guess this falls under the ‘roadside attraction’ category — it’s not really a theme park, although it does have a ride. It’s a hike through an area of the redwood forest wherein there are a number of interesting trees growing within a mile or so of each other. Immediately upon entering, for example, you’ll find yourself looking at the Family Tree, which has a dozen trees growing out of the same trunk. As you can see in this underexposed photo, this involves some of the trees growing horizontally out of the main trunk, and others growing vertically out of those trees and out of the branches of the main tree.

After following the path for a while and taking in the Lightning Tree and the awesome Cathedral Tree and the truly titanic Brotherhood Tree you get a chance to ride a cable car up the hill to a little platform where you can take in the sea, and tops of the trees, and all the surrounding mountains.  Oh, and an osprey nest!

This was another place I could have spent all day in, walking among the trees and breathing in that pure air, but the afternoon was dragging on and I knew that I still had a ways to go before I could call it a night.  Still, I got a few good photos.  You can see them all here.

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