9 June – Avenue of Giants – Willits

We headed off along the Avenue of the Giants, stopping at various points of interest and walks. We saw the Founders Tree (declared as the tallest redwood, although we read in a brochure that the real tallest redwood has its identity kept secret to deter souvenir hunters). 

We saw the Dyerville Giant, a fallen redwood that is 370 feet long (about the height of a 30 storey building) and 52 feet in diameter. It fell during a storm in 1991, and the fall registered as an earthquake on the local seismologist’s equipment and was thought by locals to be a train crash because it was so loud. They estimate the tree to weigh over 1 million pounds. The Dyerville Giant was about 1600 years old, and the oldest recorded redwood is over 2200 years old. It is really something else to walk amongst the redwoods. They are just so huge that you get a real feeling of insignificance. The forests are cool and damp and sound seems muffled, as if the trees are shushing us (except when a group of Harleys go by). The redwood forest is where the scenes of Endor were shot in Star Wars Return of the Jedi (the forest of the little Ewoks) and it is going to be fun to watch the movie again and see if we can spot things we have seen for real. We stopped at the Eternal Treehouse – a redwood that has been hollowed out and used for shelter – and one of the many drive through trees.

Of course the RV won’t fit so we walked through the drive through tree. Leaving the redwoods, we headed towards the coast again. We never got there though as we came across a motorcyclist who had come off his bike on the side of the road. He had knocked himself out and had a broken collarbone, so we drove him to the nearest hospital and stayed until we knew he was going to be ok. That set us back a couple of hours, so instead of the coast road, we continued down the 101 heading South. We pulled in at a nice RV Park at about 6.00 and settled in for the night.