Barnacles wrote:
Put this on your bucket lists: If you drive highway 101 through Northern California, take a little side trip on the 'Avenue of the giants'. It's like time travel, you can imagine that it's the 1940's or 1950's. It'll boggle your mind that such a place can still exist.
Just did so the first week of November, Barnacles. Good advice ! 30+ miles of some of the most humbling sightseeing you will ever encounter. I have always thought that any big-time developer that has plans to cut down forests (or even a small grove that thwarted his plans), should be made to drive that stretch, get out and take a short hike...experience the silence and humility that nature offers.
Although I have been there several times (about 2-3 hours from me), it absolutely never disappoints.
The weather may be different from the last visit, the amount of fellow visitors may be different, doesn't matter....the experience THAT day, will be unique.
If I get asked ..."why don't you move back to Kansas where you still own several hundred acres, rather than rent a place to park your trailer you now live in ?" I merely refer them to my surroundings (and the fact that Kansas has no mountains or magnificent big forests nor gorgeous water to toss a fly into) and eventually they see what I see, and if they are being honest, and could figure out the logistics, would make the same choice.
The fact that I have now been in the PNW, specifically, southern Oregon, for the past 38+ years, longer by 7+ years than I lived in the Midwest (a moniker I have always thought hilarious....particularly including Indiana, Illinois, etc....far closer to New York city, than the Rockies....which are the BEGINNING OF THE "WEST", not the final "west" destination, by about 1500 miles !) and have established friends and, before retirement, business relationships, that will keep me here, till they "toast me", after my final breath.
I may leave instructions to have some of my ashes reserved to take back to the Flint Hills I grew up in, learned to ride a horse in, learned to manage grassland pastures and the cattle biz (somewhat..hehehe), but the majority of my ashes should be equally divided amongst the ski slopes, the rugged Oregon coast, "Jedediah Smith
State Park" (my first experience in the redwoods, back in 1984, where every campsite has a 15'-25' stump, to act as your personal "deck" !) and my beloved Rogue River.
And THAT is why y'all should make the redwoods a destination on your bucket list....and the fishing will be phenomenal, whether you catch or not.....just LOOK AT AND...SMELL(!) WHERE YOU ARE !!!
IMHO, ain't no better place on this earth. And I have been to many countries and visited most all of this one...standing pat on my youthful gamble, 38 years ago !
Come see !!!!