Category Archives: Uncategorized

10/6: So we drove east from Clearlake. With an abruptness that tickled my amateur geologist curiousity, the yellow mountains turned into a completely flat valley. Far away on the horizon, we could barely see the other mountain range through the shimmering heat. We had reached the Central Valley. This is where a big part ofContinue reading “Chapter 228: Central Valley heat”

10/6: Clearlake is the largest lake within the Californian borders. When we woke up in Lucerne, we walked down to a boardwalk down by the lake and had leftover fruit for breakfast. The lake didn’t seem that big. But then again, having grown up in serious glacial lake country, few places will seem lakey IContinue reading “Chapter 227: Clearlake”

Mr. P with the day’s catch of fruit: peaches, nectarines, cherries, strawberries and sweet peas.

9/6: That afternoon, after leaving Humboldt State Park behind, we decided that we would drive as far as we could before giving up for the day. The highway soon turned into a winding mountain road and the cars would line up behind us. But I simply didn’t dare speed, mountain driving is far too complicatedContinue reading “Chapter 225: Oddities”

9/6: There is a road, that forks off of and runs parallell to 101, that goes straight through Humboldt Redwoods State Park. It is called Avenue of the Giants. And it doesn’t take long to understand what they mean by that name. You drive through something like a tunnel of trees, with the canopy asContinue reading “Chapter 224: Avenue of the Giants”

9/6: We had just gotten out on the 101 after a wonderful lunch in Ferndale, when we caught up to a pickup truck with a motorcycle in a trailer behind it. Hanna, who was driving, didn’t want to be behind the truck, so she drove passed it. But only a moment later, the pickup truckContinue reading “Chapter 223: The source of all evil”

9/6: Well, Ferndale, a short drive south of Arcata, on the other hand was built in lavish Victorian style by farmers that had become rich by producing dairy for the gold hunting state of California. It really feels like a place from another time, placed in this hilly grass and forest country by mistake. EvenContinue reading “Chapter 222: Ferndale”

9/6: Arcata is a small university town that according to the guidebook might be one of the most progressive in the US. The politics there are uncommonly leftist (for being American). The garbage trucks run on biodiesel, the recycling gets picked up by tandem bikes and almost every road has a bike lane. It’s mostlyContinue reading “Chapter 221: Arcata”

8/6: It really is very convenient, driving a car. Being able to decide yourself where to go and when to stop. Having grown up in Stockholm with a single mom with a license but no car and a remarried dad with a car but no license, made me feel that public transportation was freedom. IContinue reading “Chapter 220: I get the having a car now”

Once properly in California, the real redwood country begins. First, we turned off the highway onto Newton B Drury Scenic Parkway, which is in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. There, we found a tiny little trailhead and went for a short hike among the giants. The evening sun made everything look golden. And along theContinue reading “Chapter 219: Our first encounter with the redwoods”