A few months ago I went up to Northern California (real Northern Cali, not San Francisco or the like), to do some do some Rabbi/Kosher work up there supervising cheese production at a place called Rumiano's. It's a cte little family owned operation that makes some great looking and smelling cheese, but as it wasn't Chalav Yisroel I can't confirm the taste (officially (JK)). The plane landed in Eureka, I rented a cute little Kia Rio and drove up to Crescent City. Being as I landed a bit before noon and I didn't have to check in to the cheese plant until 1 AM, I took the time to do some driving and hiking around. I discovered a whole part of California I did not know existed. I mean, I knew that there were redwoods and they were on the larger side. And I knew that it rained more up north that it did down south. Did you know that it rains over 100 inches a year in what's called "the redwood coast"? 100 inches! Most of that is in the winter, then when the snow starts melting and those cold waters run into te ocean it creates this ridiculously cold and foggy sub-climate that provides these massive trees with over one half of their needed water intake. That mean these trees get the equivilant of over 200 inches of rain a year. Amazing. And I know this because I was bored enough to stop by one of these nifty visitor centers thy have set up and actually watched the 12 minute feature film about the redwoods (I actually left slightly after the six minute mark once the "climate change" angle was brought in. Not my thing.).
I also discovered that these forests are very dark and my camera was having a very difficult time there (especially with the patches of relatively bright sky popping in everywhere).
The beaches up there, besides being very cold (the water doesn't get much above 50 degrees) are very rocky. Or pebbly. I.e. no sand. none. Just a lot of pretty polished pebbles that peps pay big bucks for to stick in their fish tanks.
But the air... mmmmm. I guess it's all that oxygen being produced by those giant trees, it's wonderful. Addictive almost.
On to some pics:
That would be mu Kia Rio. A wide angle lens to a dumpy car is like the liquify filter to a double chin. Magic. The car actually looks a lot dopier in real life. And it doesn't really accelerate. Really. It doesn't. But it had air conditioning and a jack to plug in my ipod, so was happy.
That would be someones shoes on a stump. Who leaves shoes on stumps? (I am viciously holding my self back from writing a some sort of stumps me pun, uchhh, wasn't strong enough.)
Big rock on little rock beach.
The now-famous polished pebbles.
Big trees, big road.
And that's that. I wish I went around the actual city taking pics (wasn't as into it yet back then). It's a real interesting city. Very poor, very happy and friendly. Very small, with some cute homes on the beach (more like bluff).
Next time maybe.