2010 USA Tour : March 28th, Bandon OR
A long travelling day with no performance at the end, so this was a day for us to be tourists, even if we were rushed tourists.
It was refreshing to waken to a warm sunny morning in the redwoods of Olema. As we approached the shore the distant clouds told us a different weather story was on the way, so we departed on our journey early to get the best of this.
Our journey today started on the winding coast and cliff hugging Route 1. This is a continuation of the wonderful and famous Pacific Highway Route One from Pismo Beach to San Francisco through Big Sur, Carmel and Monterey. North of San Francisco Route 1 is much more rugged and twisting and was a sheer delight to experience and explore as best we could in little time. This road skimmed beautiful isolated full of nature floral beaches, and rose up cliffs to wind its road through the edges, and sometimes the road cut through cliff tunnels.
Sometimes the road would pass through a small beautiful fishing village, and all these seemed to feature the arts as much as fishing. Claire and I discovered many venues along this route hosting songs, stories and music much in the genre of what we do. This started us discussing a San Francisco to Seattle coast tour in the future with little travelling between each gig.
We stopped at a delightful coffee shop in one of the villages, and wish I could remember the name of it, coffee shop and village, as the coffee was super superb and the home made shortbread the very best ever. The cafe had a policy of no wi-fi, no tv, no piped music ….. therefore it was a very chatty cafe, very full and lots of table debates on politics, arts, writings and saving the planet. I think this said something about this area. Also, I was the only man without a beard, though I had not shaved that morning.
and through giant redwoods
Though there were small tall redwood bunches on Route 1, it was not until this road bended east to meet Route 101 that the famous redwoods came into view. Also this was the time that the looming wet stormy weather arrived on the shore, which seemed very fitting for the redwood experience. Alas, the heavy rain made taking photos of these wonderful giants very difficult as the camera and lens was soaked in a second or two. It was tough taking good upward photos.
Despite the wind and heavy rain downfall it was a delight to travel a hundred miles or much more through the forests of these oxygen abundant giants, so tall and so wide, with some of them carved for cars to drive through.
The redwoods were broken up by the large surfing and sea vacation town of Eureka. North of Eureka it seemed liked endless RV parks, casinos, eateries and trimmings for neon style eat and play vacations. Sometimes the road would quieten down to take us through more redwood forests, especially after we crossed the Oregon line, but not as abundant as before Eureka.
arriving at Bullards Beach, north of Bandon OR
It was dark, stormy, but not raining so hard, as we entered the forested state park towards our camp site for the night, quite late, 10:30 pm, as we had stopped many times through this 14 hour travelling day of outstanding Pacific North West beauty. Even in the dark, with the moon slipping through breaks in the cloud, we discovered this was a remarkable state park camp ground. Each RV parking sight had its own tall hedge alcove well away from the next RV. Not only was this wonderful privacy but peace of mind of protection from the forecast of storm winds and rain for the night. Claire and I did end up in a long peaceful sleep, put to sleep by the pitter patter of rain on the roof. It was not cold.
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