Dateline: Willits, CA, May 22

The road from the so-called "Gateway to the Redwoods" to actual redwoods turned out to be a long, long road indeed. Propinquity doesn't seem to be necessary to be a gateway - hey, Raleigh needs a gimmick to attract tourists...!

Dateline: Leggett, CA, May 22

The "Drive-thru tree" turns out to be about 4-6 trees throughout California, so we just stopped at the "first" (who knows?) one - the Chandelier Tree. There were people trying to fit their Audis and Hondas thru, but it seemed unlikely that poor Chuck (our Grand Caravan) could successfully thread the eye of this particular needle, so rather than getting stuck and becoming a permanent part of the California landscape, Nancy walked through with RoadPuppy.

Dateline: Leggett, CA, May 22

The dangerous Fuzzy White Termite.

Dateline: Leggett, CA, May 22

Honey, I shrunk the shrubs!

Classic snowglobe - our best to date.

Dateline: Redwood Forest State Park, CA, May 22

Treehugger.

Dateline: Eureka, CA, May 22

The last Kinkos until Billings, MT.

(Seattle had Kinkos, but we were having too much actual fun for me to update to site.)

Dateline: Crescent City, CA, May 22

Lawrence Elk. (Autographs not given, so I shot him and ate him.)

Dateline: Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park, CA, May 22

Stand by, Oberon and Titania - HEY, WHO PUT A DAMN TENT ON THE SET!!?!??

Seriously, this was an unbelievably beautiful site for camping - the ferns were an irredescent green against the redwoods, and you can't see the monster trees behind the camera that made up my front lawn. The best site so far.

Except for the bears. Or risk of bears - there were signs up everywhere warning of the frisky little boogers, who might bop by and eat your car just to get at the meaty filling.

Other than THAT, it was perfect.