No crazy adventures found us in the redwood groves of Humboldt County; nonetheless, we fell completely under their spell. This was Greg’s favorite part of the trip, hands down. It’s not so easy for me to pick a favorite, since I loved everyplace, but there is something particularly magical about a redwood grove. Individually, the giant sequoias we saw in the national parks were more impressive, however, as whole the redwood groves were much more lush and lovely. There is a lot more undergrowth in these groves, which gives them a beautiful fairyland feel.
It is probably this aspect that made the groves of this area the location of choice for the Endor scenes in the Return of the Jedi. This chase scene was filmed in Cheatham Grove, not too far from where we camped at Grizzy Creek State Park.
While we were hiking around this grove, a group of boys were filming themselves reenacting scenes from the movie, and I’ll bet their shots came out pretty good because it still looks very much as it appears in the film. Here's Greg's slideshow from Cheatham Grove:
There is also something very timeless about this place, or maybe it’s part of the appeal of camping in general. During one of our nights in Grizzy Creek, we overheard a group of teenagers singing along to oldies. As I listened to them belt out and butcher La Bamba and Twist & Shout, I couldn’t help but think that this is scene that could have occurred anytime in the last 40 years. And it probably has played out in the exact same way over and over again: Loud teenagers get away for a camping trip so that they can drink beers that were probably bought by someone’s sibling, away from their parents for a night, while all the adults in the campground simultaneously roll their eyes and think about the not so distant time they were doing the exact same thing. There is something profound and comforting about that kind of continuity.
Despite the fact that this was a Star Wars location site, it is still somewhat off the beaten path and it felt worlds away from the packed crowds of Yosemite. After all of those hoards and masses, we were happy to wind away down two-lane Highway 36 for a couple of hours in search of this campground, but you can definitely get your redwood fix without going so far out the way. There is a 31- mile detour off of the 101 that follows the old highway route, known as the Avenue of the Giants. There are plenty of kitschy tourist traps along this route, but there are also some very cute towns and loads of unspoiled redwood groves right alongside the road.
We didn’t make it that far up into Northern California; we only saw a little of the very southern portion of Humboldt County, which isn’t even as far north as you can go. California is BIG. Think about the fact that while San Fran is considered to be a part of Northern Cali, but it’s only about 2/3 of the way up the state. We were about 5 hours north of SF and there’s still another entire chunk of state above that. I think this section of the state is often overlooked, and Greg and I were even guilty of that. I don’t think Northern California was really at the top of our list of spots to visit, but by the time we left Greg was ready to buy a vacation home there. Well, we don’t have that kind of money, but I’d love to go back to further explore the northern end of the Golden State.
No comments:
Post a Comment