Mattole Road and The Avenue of the Giants

[Axel Slingerland]

I can't remember, did I post about my last bicycle trip that I never got to take due to my health? This first video is Mattole Road to Petrolia I had already done, out and back, as at the time the rest of Mattole Road was closed due to flooding and rock slides. Four years later, I had planned to start at home in Eureka, ride down US 101 to Humboldt Redwoods State Park, then take Mattole Road to Petrolia from the park, thus completing the loop.

This second one is The Avenue of the Giants. My all time favorite place in California.

And of course, I had also planned to head back home the way I came, back to US 101. The trip, with numerous little side trips here and there would have been about 150 miles.

It really makes me sad that there is no way I could do that now. It would be kind of hard to camp along the way if I couldn't get up off the ground.

Anyway, I thought y'all might like a little drive on the Lost Coast.

 

[Marie Mallory]

Beautiful trees, although I'll never get to visit. I never been any further west than Texas.

 

[Axel Slingerland]

Yep, the Redwoods are amazing. The first time I ever saw them my band had played in Spokane, Washington and we were driving to Pacifica, California. We drove through Eureka at 10:00p, stopped a restaurant for burgers, and kept going. We decided to pull into the parking lot of a state park and camp in the bus for the rest of the night. The next morning we walked out of the bus and saw where we were. We stared in awe of the biggest trees I've ever seen, and off the cuff I told them that I was going to retire there. It took me over 20 year to get back there but I did retire in Eureka in 1998.

Something don't ever want to do, is live in a house within falling range of a Redwood tree.

 

[Axel Slingerland]

Last night I had to leave and never got to "finish" that post...

While there is no way to accurately tabulate exact how many trees were blown down, or how many of them were Redwoods, during the 11 Atmospheric Rivers that went through the San Francisco Bay Area in early 2023, but while the storms hit almost the entire state of California, the Bay Area got the worst of it.

13K downed trees reported to PG&E in 2023. How many in SF during bomb cyclone?​

And there I was, in a hospital bed bored to tears. I was grateful that the hospital room I was in had a huge TV, and I watched the Weather Channel off and on all day. The hospital had city water, which got compromised in the storm and wasn't safe to drink, so the hospital gave everyone bottled water to drink for almost three weeks. For almost 25 years I've told people in Eureka that March was the worst month of the year for storms. This storm started a few days after I go to Petaluma, which fortunately was the best of three hospitals I was in. If there was nothing I was interested in on TV (at least they had good ones) I just had the CNA's open the curtains and I watched the storm rage. A lot of Redwoods fell in the Bay Area.

People always told me that there are no Hurricanes in California. I asked them "What is the difference between a Hurricane, a Cyclone, a Typhoon and a Tornado?" They said they didn't know. But I do now. All of them are rotating storms with heavy rain and wind speeds exceeding 74 mph (119 kph), a quiet center called the Eye, and the only difference between them is their location.

Hurricanes, Cyclones and Typhoons are basically the same, except for their size and where they are located. Hurricanes and Cyclones are typically found in the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific oceans, where as Typhoons are usually found in Northwest Pacific Ocean. Tornadoes are smaller, they have shorter duration, and form over land. Some people say that Tornadoes are baby Hurricanes. If you happen o fly over a Hurricane and can look down in the Eye, you will see what appears to be an enormous Tornado.

By the way, I learned all that during the days I spent lying in bed watching the Weather Channel during that storm. At least when the power was on.