Vaycay -- Part 5!

I told you there'd be way too many parts to this!

To recap: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

So, we woke up in Fort Bragg on Wednesday morning and decided we'd check out the botanical gardens in town before heading farther up the coast. So we paid our $17 each and headed in -- pretty early actually, I think we got a good jump on the day, seeing as we had BIG TREES ahead! (Some of our favorite things).

But the gardens were cool. We saw a bunch of shit I've never heard of or seen before. I'm not sure my garden appreciation skills are up to par, but it was ... pretty! Again, we stalked the whale lookout point but didn't spot much. Nothing lived up to what we saw at Pt. Cabrillo.

Oh hey.

Once we were gardened out, we continued agricultural day by heading north. We were in the car maybe 2 hours and then we hit Avenue of the Giants, which leads you right into the Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

It was so funny, like, you can take the main road, just some dinky highway, or you can take Avenue of the Giants, which is like, this crazy, scenic, windy road into the park. We obvi opted for the avenue. But right when we got on, this car behind us starts tailgating, like, HARD. James is like, "hey buddy, you taking this road to make better time? Bad news. We're on Avenue of the Giants, I'm not here to set a new world record."

I was laughing so hard.

So anyway, we'd seen big trees before, as I outlined in this post. In Calaveras County, you'll see some of the largest trees you could ever hope to see, thickness-wise. Like, trees as big as an entire room. Unreal. But coastal redwoods are a bit different. Some are pretty thick, but they don't stack up to the Calaveras trees in that regard. These guys though, are TALL. Holy F they are MASSIVELY tall. Couldn't even fathom.

Pics don't even do these justice.

The drive in was pretty, we liked AOTG, then we decided to stop at the visitors center (mostly to pee).

Another sign that I'm getting up there: I actually like visitors centers now! This one was super friendly and informative, and the woman at the desk gave us some great recommendations on a few close and easy groves.

We went to four groves. It was a challenge to only be there for a day -- a lot of the hikes were like, do you want to do 13 miles, or a half-mile? So we picked the short ones then just poked around a little longer at each.

This state park is where some parts of Jurassic Park were filmed (yep, with the dinos and everything, can you believe it? jkjk). And Star Wars! Not that I've seen Star Wars. Who do I look like? I just thought that was cool.

It was a really quiet day there -- maybe because it was a weekday? At times, it felt like we were the only people in each grove. We had our final sammies of the trip and some snacks down at this river, and didn't come across anyone at all. It felt so strange to think about how long the trees around us had been there.

They said at the visitors center that when one of the biggest ones fell, there was seismic activity. Holyyyyyy.

Jimmy, with a fallen tree (its roots). For reference, he's 5'10 or so.

We hung at the park till maybe 6p-ish, just poking around and taking in all the sights, then decided to continue on to our next crash pad: Eureka.

Honestly though, I could have spent a whole week at the park! It was massive and we barely skimmed the surface.

Buttttttt Eureka! We (I) mostly picked it because it's one of the bigger cities that far north, and I thought we could use a night with a cheap(er) hotel room. We can't B&B the entire time! So, we dropped some stuff at the (medium)-Quality Inn, then headed right out for another bite because we were hungry from all the hiking and nature strolls.

One of the only places open at 9p was this BBQ place -- which was actually in the process of closing. Whatever, we split a plate of burnt ends, pork and coleslaw. They had a million different BBQ sauces and I loved almost every one. G bought us two mini-caramels for dessert, and we were in and out in 20 minutes. #lowmaintenance

From there, we went to this bar around the corner called The Local. There were a ton of Humboldt State students and they were ... exactly what I expected. Humboldt is like, the pot capital of the world, for reference, and this crowd didn't disappoint.

NorCal knows beer, though. We had a bunch of really good local ones on tap.

And from THERE, we headed a little closer to our hotel, to this dive bar, for $1.50 drafts. We crashed late and I have no idea how I kept managing to get up the next day at a reasonable hour.

TBC!