Volcano and Treehouse Trip: Heading Home

Our original plan was to make it home by Saturday night, but we did a quick clothing and medicine survey and decided to extend the trip to Sunday. Friday we checked out of the treehouse place and headed south to Crescent City.

One last treehouse to show. I had not seen this until we were wandering around touring all of the empty treehouses. This place, Out 'n About, was a bit pricey and can be challenging to get a reservation at, especially on summer weekends, but was great fun and we have a better idea of which treehouses we want to try for next time.

The drive to Crescent City CA is not long, but it is infested with very large redwood trees.

And beaches.

And shopping opportunities if you are in the market for redwood-based knickknacks. We were not even vaguely in the market for such things, but this is how the back window of our car looked after we left one of these places.

When we enter a store like this, I typically head one way and Mrs Notthat another. When we met up later, I mentioned that I had seen the coolest thing - she said she had too, and it turned out that we were bizarrely talking about the same work of wooden art. I asked for naming suggestions and an ex-coworker (Thanks Deerc - not his real name) came up with Mickey. Mickey Moose.

Once we got to Crescent City we chose a nice quiet motel called the Curly Redwood Lodge. It was nearly empty and had WiFi, so we were set. Shortly after we checked in, a group of motorcycles pulled in and ended up with rooms on either side of ours.

At dinner we found out that there was a motorcycle rally scheduled for the next morning. The good news was that the rally was set to head the direction we just came from, so they would not affect our trip south. The other good news was that they had to be at the starting point fairly early, so the bikers actually quieted down early (for bikers - I think we were up later than them). The bad news is that they had to be at the starting point fairly early, which meant they were up early, and there is no such thing as a quiet Harley.

Our goal the next day was to get to Willits or Leggit - somewhere around 200 miles further south. As it turned out, there were many shopping opportunities in Crescent City, so we were pretty late leaving town, and in the end only made it about 85 miles to Eureka.

Along the way there were many beaches and redwoods (and redwood-based shopping opportunities, which we wisely avoided since Mickey Moose was already a bit cramped for space) and a field with a herd of wild elk that calmly grazed while we gawked at them.

The night in Eureka was uneventful, but left us with a fairly long drive on Sunday to get home. However, I could not resist driving down a road called the Avenue of the Giants.

Unfortunately, there was nothing along this road but a massive number of huge redwood trees - there was no evidence of the Giants anywhere. Not even a plaque for Willie Mays or Will Clark.

The biggest surprise of the trip was this sight when we reached San Francisco - a completely fog free Golden Gate Bridge (this was at about 6 PM).

And we finally made it home. Mickey is currently guarding the front porch, but his final location has not been decided. He seems comfortable enough here where he is protected from Idiot Dog Teddy and can guard the cherry tree from ruthless squirrels (the cherries appear nice and ripe - hopefully we will get to harvest them today).

This was a great trip that even lots of rain, large snow drifts, a noisy group of 8th graders, and a motorcycle gang could not dampen. Now it's back to the real world of work and grandkids. 

Which is not that bad of a deal.

That's it - move along...