When I decided that I wanted to ring in my 31st year of life via road trip I knew I wanted to plan the entire trip and leave it as responsible free for Ryan as possible. He has an inherit knack of wanting to plan every vacation down to the final hour, and he’s pretty good at it. However, this time was different on numerous levels, and I wanted to take care of every detail, and every none detail. With a combination of Google Earth and my basic knowledge of what lies above us in what I call “The Square Part” of California, I spent a whole two hours on a rainy afternoon designing my master plan. A plan that would put us further north in our home state than we had ever been and more time in the car together than our last 3 road trips combined. With the soul purpose of finding gorgeous landscapes and nature’s best assets to practice our photography on, I spent little attention to star ratings and more on location for places to stay. Leaving everything, beyond designated spots to rest our heads, up to Mother Nature and the stars, we loaded the car with a single piece of luggage (more on my first time minimalist packing later), every piece of camera gear we own and a snack bag full of pop-tarts and bottled water and headed out onto CA-101 North.
In the first 2 days we covered the entire Northern California coastline. Complete with a swing through Drive-Thru Tree Park, a scenic cruise up The Avenue of the Giants and a pop into the gigantic Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox gift shop, we worked our way up to Crescent City .
I severly underestimated the amount of beauty found in Northern California. The redwoods stand so tall and proud, rivers like the Eel, McCloud and Klamath break apart the thickest spots of the forests with water so pure and clean you almost want to bathe in it. Places like Crescent City with it’s red-roofed light house and pelican filled harbor, line the coast as you fade in and out of their hippy-surfer infested downtowns.
We constantly found ourselves pulled over on unknown roads, swapping lenses and resetting the tripod. At one point in Orick we found ourselves sitting along a dead end road, staring at about half a dozen sets of Elk antlers as we waited for at least one of them to stand up in the field of ferns that they had taken their high noon sunbath in. Turns out Ryan does a horrible Elk call but can balance on the edge of a decrepit wooden fence with camera in position for hours. The things you learn.
Some of my personal favorite shots that Noodle got our first couple of days out:
Bound for the Oregon border by day three, I personally had no knowledge or expectations of what we would find along the 199. All I knew as we crossed over into our friendly neighbor from the north was that we were bound to see layers of forestry and maybe, possibly, hopefully, some sort of wild life. The type of wildlife that was waiting for us just miles away was nothing I would have ever imagined in my wildest dreams. OK, maybe in my wildest but I have quite the imagination.
