| Aug 13 @ 12:23 PM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One
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custis
Posts: 1,363
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On this Monday of August 11th,I make my way south on Highway 101. It was a lovely weekend and I enjoyed the time spent with my daughter, her husband and my two tiny grandchildren. From here on the time is mine and I intend to make the greatest use of it possible as I cruise along the rugged cliffs overlooking the blue Pacific.
There is far more than just the ocean shore on this drive. Yielding to nostalgia, I stop in for a visit in the coastal redwood forests, a place I have not seen in about 25 years. It has been long enough to where I am once again astounded as I walk through the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. I realize that I should have returned to this incredible place much sooner.
It is difficult to describe this forest. You have to actually be amongst these gigantic trees, standing at their mighty boles and looking up into the distant foliage above you. Golden shafts of sun make their way through the great branches, along with tendrils of mist making it's way in from the ocean. The mist glows in the sunlight as it mixes amongst the foliage, creating a mystic aura, the climax of the northwestern coast.
The trees appear ageless, ancient beyond measure. It is not difficult to realize that some of these monstrous plants look the same as they did on the day my father was born. They are so huge and old that ninety years is nothing to them. My lifetime is nothing to them. It was yesterday. They are living time capsules.
By the time I get to Crescent City, ocean fog has moved in to create an early afternoon overcast, making for a melancholy mood that is appropriate for this small oceanside town. It is the same kind of marine fog layer that used to move over my home town on many a summer day.
Ocean World is a nice little aquarium. However, I hate being led by the nose by a tour guide. I would much rather have just sat downstairs by the aquarium windows and watched the fish. The young man who leads the group does his practiced routine fine, but is not knowledgeable enough to answer any of the serious scientific questions I pose to him. At one window I am completely entranced by the graceful leopard sharks that swim around like so many strange birds gliding about in some gloomy greenish sky. I would have been content to stand there for an hour with my face up against the glass, but the guide calls us on to the next step of the tour and then back out to the gift shop where he hopes the group will blow some money.
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| Aug 13 @ 12:27 PM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One |
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michedkel
Posts: 4,685
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Custis, this would have made one hell of a blog. Just sayin'. 
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| Aug 13 @ 12:28 PM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One
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Loreli
Posts: 20,319
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I agree Mich...
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| Aug 13 @ 12:34 PM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One |
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missliss78
Posts: 1,879
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Awesome, custis.
I am assuming you plan to add to this daily on your journey.
I'm glad I found it already & I plan to keep a check back for more!
I enjoy reading you regardless of where you posts!
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| Aug 13 @ 4:15 PM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One
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kattsmeow
Posts: 21,280
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I love traveling that road. One of my first adventures in California was down route one. 
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| Aug 14 @ 12:03 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One |
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custis
Posts: 1,363
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Thank you all for your comments. They are appreciated. Pictures I have posted thus far can be seen at this site, posted by Custis Long. When I begin posting pics taken in the desert, they will appear at my Desert Rats site. I will then post the address for you. Enjoy.
http://nyghtwyngs.com/wyngs/wyngs.html
[Edited on 8/14/2008 12:05 AM]
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| Aug 14 @ 12:04 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One
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custis
Posts: 1,363
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My next stop in California is Eureka, a town where I lived for a couple of years in the early eighties when I was still married.
This is a bittersweet journey into the past for me. The low marine layer covers the Samoa penninsula as I drive out to Manila for a look at my old haunts. There is a special tug at my heart as I stop and walk out onto the old RR bridge where I used to fish for sharks with my ex's young cousins. We had problems aplenty, but in retrospect those days seem so carefree in my memory. The place seems lonely today, dark under a brooding foggy sky in the late afternoon. At one spot I park and walk over a low dune dotted with wildflowers and iceplants to look out over the misty sea across a sandy expanse of beach. Memories come back to me and I could easily imagine that I am back there in that time, and all the intervening time since then was just a dream that I have now awakened from. My white truck and my khaki clothes are proof that I have not stepped into another dimension, that it really is 2008 rather than 1981. I suddenly feel very lonely. There were friends and opportunities in this town back then. Both are now long lost.
After a good Mexican dinner on Second St, I go down to the end of N street to take a look at the duplex apartment where I once lived. It is a little different than I recalled, but not much. The ex and I never got along well, so my good times in Eureka mainly started after she left me one early spring afternoon.
Once she was gone, I began to get out and really see Eureka. I made friends, went fishing, explored the forest and seashores. I even had not one, but two girlfriends, who were just as happy with one another as they were with me. It was a good time that was far too brief.
A chill that has nothing to do with the weather creeps inside of me as I look at the tendrils of fog creeping through tree branches overhead. It is time to leave this place and stop dwelling in the past.
August 12.
Yesterday I left my motel room in Weaverville, California. Winding my way through the rugged high sierras I passed Lassen Volcanic National Park, coming into a territory of mixed high desert and forest ecologies. It was strange to see Lodgepole Pine, cedar, juniper, rabbitbush, sagebrush, buckbrush, mountain mahogany, manzanita and Ponderosa all mixed together in a beautiful sort of potpourri.
I gassed up in Susanville, on the edge of the high desert. I lunched on some slices of turkey, an avocado, a granola bar, a tomato and a small carton of milk. From that point on I had but one objective, to get on the other side of Reno as quickly as possible. After that my focus was in reaching the turnoff for highway 95 south so that I could relax and enjoy the beautiful desert scenery as I sped south.
A few miles before reaching Walker Lake, I stopped at a very pleasant looking desert bajada and walked up a shallow dry wash for a ways, scaring up one of the largest leopard lizards I have ever seen. Throwing up its characteristic spurt of sand and gravel, the animal raced off like a tawny torpedo speeding towards an enemy ship.
At Hawthorne I got a room before having a delicious Mexican meal at a little restaurant barely a hundred feet from the Motel.
After supper I took my camera and drove south to the little ghost town of Mina. Just south of the town a dirt road leads off to the southwest, toward some low, rugged hills called the Excelsior Mountains. Having been there before, I knew right where it was.
One could scarcely dream of a more beautiful place to enjoy the desert sunset. East of me, the Pilot Mountains shone like molten copper while I stood in the growing shadow of the Excelsiors. A false sunset in colors of metallic pink and rose lit the eastern sky like something out of a surreal dream, blending with the golds, oranges and reds of the west to shed an eerie glow over the desert around me.
The desert floor where I stood was a mosaic of tiny pebbles creating an intricate number of patterns and textures, dotted with stunted shadscale and greasewood. A fairly large zebra-tailed lizard, his sides painted with a beautiful shade of turquoise, watched me with a glittering eye while I tried to get a picture of the nervous creature. Tiring of my attempts to get close, the lizard flashed away with it's black and white striped tail curled overhead, a mere blur of speed like some little ghost.
As I drove back to my room, several brilliant flashes in the indigo sky reminded me of the Perseid meteor shower that was in full force.
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| Aug 14 @ 12:47 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One |
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keeno
Posts: 2,037
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thanks for sharing, you're trip has covered some of my favorite roads....395 to bishop and the bakery....ya buddy
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| Aug 14 @ 1:54 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One
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SunBabe
Posts: 12,251
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After that my focus was in reaching the turnoff for highway 95 south so that I could relax and enjoy the beautiful desert scenery as I sped south.
Ow, and there you were, just about a mile from my house. 
I waved, though, just in case. 
(PS, I love Mina...and Hawthorne, too. )
...it's so nice to hear someone describe it as "beautiful desert scenery" -- I'm afraid I just call it d-i-r-t 
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| Aug 14 @ 3:30 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One |
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keeno
Posts: 2,037
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butt butt sunny you could think of it as a vast beach 
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| Aug 14 @ 10:59 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One
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custis
Posts: 1,363
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"I'm afraid I just call it d-i-r-t"
That is quite a short writeoff for all the beautiful landforms and pastel colors I have seen on highway 95. And the sunsets, even the Pacific ocean shore does not rival the Nevada sunsets.
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| Aug 14 @ 11:33 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One |
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Loreli
Posts: 20,319
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If I may...
often we don't see what others see where we live!
One gets accustomed to it, and it's their "norm."
I have a friend in CA, and when I visited her, she was reluctant to go to the beach with me, because she had done it so much, still did from time to time.
It was exciting for ,me!
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| Aug 14 @ 11:42 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One
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Haban3ro
Posts: 1,141
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If you ever get to Bora-bora, take a bike ride all the way around the island. The central mountain has a different profile as you look at is from different angles. sometimes, it will seem like you're looking at a whole different mountain within the course of half a mile.
It's as though the Great Architect realized lots of people would spend their entire lives on this tiny little bit of land, and he didn't want them to be bored.
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| Aug 15 @ 10:46 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One |
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custis
Posts: 1,363
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August 14--2008
Death Valley and Beyond the Infinite.
Tonight I climbed into the Funerals, over Daylight Pass and to the very edge of Hell's Gate. The sun is setting as I get out of my truck and look into the vast purple hole of Death Valley. In the gathering twilight I can make out vast salt flats and desert vistas that seem unnatural because of the shape of the great graben. The colors are beyond imagination. Beginning with brilliant gold from the setting sun on nearby rugged peaks, it gradually shades into mauves and powder blue to dusky indigo with a billion shades in between, punctuated by patches of rhyolite and other minerals dotting the valley floor.
To the west the great flaming god slowly sinks into the Panamint Range, throwing piercing beams that are at once, soft and brilliant, into a lavender sky that is already filling with small acrobatically swooping bats.
Looking southward down into the valley from this point is a view that pales even the Grand Canyon in comparison. The walls of the valley curve upward, reminding me of a science fiction story I once read of an artificial world that covered the inside of a forty-kilometer long cylinder traveling through space. It is simply stupendous, range after range of rugged mountains walling the valley, vanishing into the deep and darkening silence.
A wind blows steadily up out of that dark tunnel into the bowels of the earth. It feels as if it is coming from a gigantic furnace. My best guess is 118 degrees. A young man and his wife pull up in a small silver car. I see that they are taking photos of one another against the backdrop of the glowing mountain near at hand, with the gibbous moon brilliantly shining just above it and I offer to photograph them together. He gratefully hands me the camera and I snap several shots of them. They are both still waving as I drive away.
Coming back down to Beatty I can see the Amargosa Desert stretching to the south in the twilight glow. The ghost ruins of Carara that I visited earlier in the evening are plainly visible on the bajada of Bare Mountain near the old Gold Ace Mine. It is a scene of utter enchantment. Metallic pink clouds are brushed against the western sky as if by some great artist.
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| Aug 16 @ 10:54 AM |
Custis Long's Travel Journal--Part One
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custis
Posts: 1,363
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I have posted more pictures at this site.
http://disc.yourwebapps.com/Indices/232051.html
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