Victorian Homes in the Coastal Town of Eureka and Redwoods

One of my first blog posts was entitled “Why Travel.” I gave a number of reasons why people might travel. Here’s another reason: one travels to get things done. Such was the case this last March. After buying another car, we decided to give our older car to our daughter Andrea to replace her even older car. However, Andrea lives near San Jose, California, and as a teacher she couldn’t easily come and get it. We decided to drive it down for her. It did allow us to see a few sites around California’s coastal town, Eureka.

On our first day out, we drove straight down I-5 to Grants Pass, Oregon. Having driven much of this freeway a variety of times over the years, we didn’t stop much. I did make one nostalgic stop in Roseburg, Oregon. My family moved to Roseburg before my 9th grade year, and I graduated from high school there. I wanted to drive by our old home there just to see what it was like. From the outside there were some changes, mainly a fence around the property. The trees were also a lot taller, but that’s what happens over 50 years.

We spent the night in Grants Pass. Our hotel was right on the Rogue River, and we enjoyed walking a path along the river. There were two bridges crossing the river as the roads were each one way.

The next day we took Hwy. 199 towards the Pacific Coast. I thought it would be the more scenic route. However, a funny thing happened as we passed through the town of Cave Junction. Silvette spotted a car wash. We had wanted to vacuum out the car, but hadn’t, and this place had a great vacuum system. So we stopped and spent about a half hour cleaning the inside of the car, not one’s usual tourist activity.

The highway was indeed a scenic drive despite our stop. For a while we followed along the Smith River, and I stopped a few times to take photos. As we approached the coast we began to see redwoods near the road.

We came to Hwy 101 and turned south towards Eureka. We stopped at a beach near the highway. It was a foggy day which created some interesting photos. It seems like lately I have been taking a lot of foggy photos.

I wanted Silvette to experience the Redwood National Park so we drove south and then off the highway to the Lady Bird Johnson Redwood Grove. When Andrea and I visited here a few years ago, this was one of the easier hikes we took, and there were lots of redwoods. The experience this day was different than my previous visit becasue of the fog. It was high enough to be in the grove and of course it created a totally different atmosphere. The walk was pretty easy, but muddy in places. We didn’t mind as it was good to be out of the car and moving.

The walk is a loop. Toward the end of it, I was seeing a lot of the moss hanging from the trees which is so typical in the rainy parts of the coast.

After walking through the redwoods, we continued on south to Eureka. Andrea and I had not spent any time here, and I was interested in seeing the Victorian style homes that Eureka is well known for. However, I decided to approach the town from a different direction. At the town of Arcata, I turned west and went around the bay to a peninsula that protects Eureka from the Pacific Ocean. I thought the drive would be more scenic, but it wasn’t as nice as I expected. There also wasn’t any place to stop and take photos of the bay.

A bridge took us back into Eureka. It was a bit of a challenge to figure out where the Victorian homes were. I thought they were mostly in one location, but they were scattered around. Some streets definitely had more. They could be identified either by their architectural details or their unique color schemes. It always feels a bit awkward to be taking a photo of someone else’s home.

After I got photos of a number of homes, we found some dinner and then headed farther south. We were staying in an older historic hotel. I got a good deal on the room. It was quite interesting and was furnished with antiques.

The next day I wanted to continue driving along the coast going over to Highway 1, but I could tell Silvette just wanted to get to our daughter’s place without much delay so after a nice breakfast at a nearby cafe, we headed south on highway 101. We didn’t stop more than we had to and reached our daughter’s apartment in the late afternoon.

The next day we spent getting the title of the car transferred to Andrea. Sitting in the California DMV was not a lot of fun. We had an appointment, but we still had to wait a while to talk to someone. We then had to wait again for them to inspect the car. This was not a vacation day.

We were flying back to Seattle the next morning. Since Andrea would be teaching, we needed to get ourselves to the airport. We planned to take the bus. We walked over to the bus stop to make sure we knew where we were going. It’s a good thing we did. A sign at the bus stop indicated that the bus drivers were on strike so no bus service was available. So we had to pivot. We ended up ordering a car through Lyft which we had not done before, but it was a pretty easy process. We got to the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight home.

While this trip wasn’t quite as scenic as I had hoped it would be, I still got to do a few different things so even though it wasn’t exactly a vacation, it was still a change of pace and a chance to spend some time with Andrea. I’ll take it.