Friday, August 7, 2009

Ontheroad-Northern CA

We spent some time in Ferndale talking to Judy and Bill who turned out to be the best things about Ferndale. We drove to "the city" Eureka. Eureka seemed filled with sown and out characters and dilapidated buildings for home and business. We did pass a fancy private club so I guess everyone is not down and out.

Outside of Eureka is Fort Humboldt. You see the Humboldt name a lot up here and the county is Humboldt but apparently Humboldt was just a guy who was able to see Lake Humboldt through the incessant fog so they named it after him. The fort was another one of these army forts set up to control the Indians.

Lumber was a big business around here and early pioneers could see the value in the lumber of the redwoods but had not technology to cut the trees. In the fort they displayed the equipment created by resourceful entrepeneurs to cut the trees to move them with pulley system and steam engines developed to power the pulleys.

A little further along we visited a Redwood state park which provided a beautiul trail up through abundant trees and ferns.

We stopped for the night in Crescent City (shaped like a crescent in the middle of a bay and the ocean. This is the home of the biggest American Tsunami in the US and half of its town was destroyed. There are still tsunami warnings in this area.

We stopped at the Best Western again because it had 3 diamonds in triple A but the available rooms had higher prices so we went to a lower rated Lighthouse next door and it quite a bit nicer tahn the triple diamond Best Western that se stayed in our first night.

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