"MIght as Well...."

Barbel always says we "might as well" finish off the ice cream all the way to the bottom because if you leave any in the carton, it's going to turn rancid!  I have always admired her dedication to preserving freshness at all costs.

So in that spirit, I decided today: Might as well move on up into Oregon, now that I'm here.

Growing up--and not so long ago, too--Betty used to say that I made decisions "by consensus."  I'd ask her, Carlene, and anyone who cared enough to contribute an opinion, then I'd usually go ahead and do whatever I wanted to do in the first place.

Here's how you know if you've made the right decision: After deciding, you might find yourself walking through a parking lot singing "We're off to see the wizard," as I did.  Or you might just catch a glimpse of yourself in the rear view mirror and you're grinning ridiculously.

Today was such a fun day.  I left Eureka scarfing down an apple and rhubarb galette I'd saved from the day before from the Healdsburg City Bakery--which ranks right up there as one of the most delicious breakfasts ever.  Like Barbel's ice cream, it would surely have gone terribly rancid in a  few hours, so I enjoyed it on the road, driving to Crescent City on 101.  I consulted no one on this point.

For anyone who's driven Highways 1 and 101 out here, you know that every vista is scenic, I mean autumn calendar scenic.  But here's one thing I've learned this week:

If you see a sign that says "Scenic Alternative," you're in for a super curvy road with no bathrooms for forever.  The speed limit ranges between 15 and 20 miles per hour.  And what is a "scenic alternative" to Already Scenic?

You can't go wrong.  But you can go decidedly faster on Regular Scenic than on Scenic Alternative.

Not that I'm after speed.  But after Big Sur and miles of coastline, my leg situation being what it's been, I was thrilled to finally see that sign to Grant's Pass, Oregon,  and assumed that the stretch called 199 on the map was going to be a regular road, one I could just sit back and enjoy on cruise control.

More curves, sunset coming on, the roadsides an explosion of gold and orange and redwood trees: that was 199, the Redwood Highway.  I had to pull over a couple of times, one for elk, the other for Paul Bunyan and Babe.

Right beside the road, I saw my first elk since Sedona, just standing there chewing grass,   close enough I could have touched him.  Further down the road, assembled as if for a lazy Sunday afternoon, were about twenty more, watching with  boredom as we tourists ridiculously stood in a row and snapped our cameras in their direction.  One of them had a particularly impressive rack of antlers, the other had none.

I almost missed John Bunyan.  After miles of redwoods and curves, I could only imagine that all those cars parked in one place must signal some tourist attraction I didn't want to see.  And yet--there he was: A huge blue-eyed man standing beside a pale blue ox, the very huge blue-eyed man and pale blue ox that were there on my last trip down that road: mid sixties!  (I asked the woman in the gift shop how long he'd been there, and she said he was the third--and had been there since 1962, so he was the very one upon whose boots we sat for our photo op back in the day, I'm sure of it.)

The place was called Trees of Mystery.
When I get back home, I'm going to look through my daddy's old slides and see if I can find the picture of him and Bob and me sitting on John Bunyan's boot--back when such a giant in a parking lot was one of the real highlights of a trip for two kids.

Since I didn't see a place I wanted to stay in Grant's Pass, I thought: might as well head on up Highway 5, see more of Oregon.  I still haven't seen the aspens everyone's talking about, and you know how it is: there's always one more thing you can't go home without seeing!