Travelogue II: Rocks and Shoals and Redwoods

I started my Wednesday in a Travelodge in Newport, OR, where they apparently rig the shower faucets to give juuuust enough hot water to make it tolerable. During the night a pickup truck parked directly outside my room had its car alarm go off repeatedly. Not a great night's sleep.

Anyway, first world problem.

The Oregon coast in the daytime is really something, and though I missed some of the best parts in the dark the night before, I made several stops off the 101 highway to Oregon state beaches and little towns. (A couple of fun notes from the road: An access street off the highway to a beach residential area was called "Lois Ln"; a coffee shop in Coos Bay is called "The Human Bean." Whatever, I was amused.)

Beaches in Oregon tend to be small but pretty, with giant boulder formations just offshore and varying scales of cliff formations not far up/down from whatever sandy area you may find yourself at:

The 101 highway here is a far cry more interesting than an Interstate, mostly a two-lane affair through little burghs all the way down to the California border, which gives way to a noticeable transition in scenery. From Crescent City, one enters the Redwoods State and National Park area.

Redwoods is beautiful, and to really experience it you'd need to stop and camp and spend a few days. I was just passing through in a matter of several hours, stopping a couple of times for short hikes on trails near the 101 that looped back around. The really good stuff would be away from the highway, but that'll have to keep for another time. I hiked, drove leisurely through scenic bypasses, hiked again, then it got dark and I made may way south to Eureka and beyond.

There will be a brief delay whilst we wait for a herd of deer to clear the roadway. Well, "brief"; maybe 20 minutes.

By the time I got to the Bay Area it was midnight or so, and I decided to just push on and make up some time by cutting over to Interstates. Boring stretches of road, but not a lot of traffic at that hour and it's dark, you can't see anything anyway beyond the semi trucks you whiz by at 75 miles an hour. I got too tired and stopped at Avenal for a few hours' nap.

Audio entertainment consisted of podcasts—Pod Save America, Poscast World Series preview edition (in which Mike Schur lays out the ideal life of Aaron Judge with blissful family fulfillment and old age and exactly zero World Series rings, plus plots how the Mets will wrest Juan Soto away from the Yankees over the offseason with several Brinks trucks worth of cash; and Jason Benetti waxes poetic about keeping an audience interested while calling games for the second-worst season of White Sox baseball in recent memory), Bob Cesca, Delta Flyers—and various mix CDs of 1970s pop/rock. Mileage report: Still frustrated by the whole gas-tank-not-really-full thing, but I think I'm doing about 50 MPG, slightly better than what the onboard computer readout says. (BTW, gasoline gets more expensive as you go south: $3.45 in Olympia, $3.69 outside Crescent City, $3.89 near Oakland, $4.09 in Victorville, CA (next day). Cheapest in Oregon, where one place had it under $3.00, but I didn't need to buy any there.)

OK, who names these things? How about "Giant coniferous wood-bearing plant, evergreen"? Or "Old Hoss Redwood?" But sure, fine, "Big Tree."