BENGARLAND!com

Last weekend, June 15-17th, Laura and I decided to drive down to California to visit the Redwoods National Forest. It was a long drive (~850 miles round-trip) but well worth it.

Friday started with a stop in Lincoln City for a late lunch. We found “Aunt Mary’s”, which was a combination of a cafe, vibrator museum, and sex toy shop. Awesome. We had two “Fuck Me, That’s Good!”s which were basically grilled cheese sandwiches with pineapple and dill ranch dressing inside.

It took a while to make it all the way down to California, so our first sight of the Redwoods was with headlights in the dark of night. We arrived at the Flint Ridge campsite after 10pm, set up the tent in the first (not very good) campsite that we found. The next morning, with the help of daylight, we moved to a better location and also noticed that there were only two other campers in the whole place (thank goodness for hike-in campsites).

Since I forgot to bring the memory card for my camera, we had to go up the highway to a Fred Meyer store (kinda like Wal-Mart) to buy a new one. On the way back down, we stopped at a National Park Service information center to get advice on where to hike to see the really big redwoods. They told us to take the trail right next to our campsite. Sweet.

Just past the info center, we saw a hitchhiker who looked nice (read: not grimy) so I slammed on the brakes, turned into a parking lot, and picked him up. His name was Caleb, and he’s a fisherman working on his license to be a captain. Turns out he has over 25,000 miles of hitchhiking around the country. We took him about 20 miles south down the highway, until we had to turn off, and said goodbye and happy birthday to Captain Caleb (he turned 30 in a few days).

Immediately after we returned to the campsite, we set off on the Flint Ridge section of the Coastal Trail. At first, it didn’t look very promising. Then, within a range of about 20 feet, it turned from birch and fir to almost all redwoods. And they were BIG. L and I went down the trail about 2 miles, crossing over and under fallen redwoods, until it was time to turn around.

We were hungry upon returning to camp, so I started a fire as L chopped veggies for our hobo meals. Dinner was ready in about 30 minutes. Chick peas, pinto beans, onion, peppers, potatoes, carrots, veggie sausage, herbs, all wrapped up in tin-foil and thrown on the coals — mmm, mmm, good!

As it started to get dark outside, we hiked back to the cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean and watched the sun set. And the weekend was still only half over!

Sunday, we thought we would get up early and drive back so we wouldn’t get home too late. We took a different route, up Hwy 199 towards I-5. At the time, we didn’t know where it would go, but were surprised when we realized that it went right through the middle of the Smith River NRA. It was a beautiful drive. L was looking at the map trying to figure out how far it was to I-5, when she said “Hey, the Oregon Caves aren’t too far off of our route… didn’t we talk about going there at some point?”

That’s when I said, “We’re going, right now.”

A 3 hour detour, and 300 feet underground later, we were back on the road. We got home late, but, as always, we didn’t care. The caves were amazing.

And so ended one of my favorite weekends so far in the Pacific Northwest.

Flickr photos: California Redwoods

Flickr photos: Oregon Caves