Day two: Avenue of Giants.

So Mahala and I are in the car after the Trees of Mystery and we’re having a little internal struggle. We want to go see the Avenue of Giants but its gonna be three hours round trip of driving, and we only have about five hours of daylight.

But what was this whole trip about? Finding a way to let loose a little and not be scared of a challenge.

And dammit, I wanted to see the Giant Tree.

So off we went. We entertained ourselves on this drive by reading the Search and Rescue stories on Reddit, and just talking about nothing.

Fun fact about the Avenue of Giants, it’s a bit less… structured? than the Trees of Mystery.

Another fun fact, Mahala and I are awesome at getting lost.

So we give my Mom a call, and she says there’s a welcome center with a map, and if we follow the map, we will find that Giant Tree.

I’m about to explain to you why that map is straight up garbage and the better way to find the Giant Tree.

So, the lines of the map aren’t really accurate to what the roads really look like. Think super curvey roads and straight lines on the map. We ended up driving waaay too far north and had to turn around. We found and started down what we thought was the correct road but after maybe 30 minutes of driving, we were a little worried we had gone the wrong way.

We find what looks like a trailhead and I hop out a look at the signs hoping it’s the trail to the Giant Tree. Well, there was nothing to indicate that it was the right place so I call my Mom again and ask about it all. She said it was super obvious when you get to the right place and it was weird that we hadn’t hit it on that road yet.

Quick note, I’m summarizing this chunk a lot. Mahala and I were at each others throats at this point but we were gonna find that stupid tree.

We look at the map again and realize “Hey! The name of the street the tree is on is on this map! Let’s type it in to google maps and we will find it then!” Oh my goodness that was a stupid plan. We type in the street, and it says to go all the way back to the highway, and we were yelling in the car. We had been searching for an hour and a half at this point.

We get back to the highway, and we cannot figure out what street to get on. A new bright idea appears. “Hey! There’s a campground really close to the tree! Let’s type the name of it in and it’ll be easy to find!”

Y’all.

We had been going down the right road before the whole time. Google maps took us to the very start of the street where it meets with the highway and we. Went. Nuts.

So, back down this stupid road we went! 45 minutes of driving wasted at that point and to top it off we were almost out of gas and we didn’t have time to get gas and come back to the tree before we lost daylight. We took a little gamble.

We’re driving down this road again and it’s starting to get dark. I should mention that those Search and Rescue stories are scary stories about scary things happening in the woods.

Yeah.

We’re that smart.

And get this guys, we start getting closer to the campgrounds near the tree, and I see a little green pin near the site on Maps. What’s this? I wonder to myself as I zoom in…

Guys.

No joke.

You can type the Giant Tree in google maps and it’ll take you straight there. You don’t have to get a map. You don’t have to try to read the stupid map and get lost. You can just. Type. It. In.

I don’t think I’ve screeched so loud in my life.

Well, we finally found the stupid trailhead and ran to the tree as it was really close to being dark. We were so worried that a Wendigo was gonna pop out of the trees and eat us or whatever Wendigos do to girls stupid enough to get lost in the Redwoods at dusk.

Anyways, here is that tree we worked so hard to find:

Along with the few pictures I managed to snap before we sprinted back to the car in near darkness.

What a freaking mess.

My biggest regret about the whole trip was not being able to spend more time with that tree. It was amazing to see. Just thinking about how that tree has been here for everything. That tree was around for Jesus, the Cold War, the Declaration of Independence, the Slave Trades, the discovery of America by Lief Erikson AND Columbus. Every moment of my life, every second I’ve been alive, that tree has been watching over its little stretch of forest.

I felt that weird contentment again staring up in its branches. Like if I got quiet enough, and opened myself up enough, that it could tell me something. It just looked so wise. One day I’m going to go back to that tree. I have some unfinished business there. I can feel it.

Mahala and I then found ourselves back in the car, with a two hour drive in the dark ahead of us. Well, eventually we found ourselves back in bed, and passed out.

I think that portion of the trip is the reason I decided to call this series “The Hottest Mess on The West Coast”. That, and the other shenanigans we got ourselves into that didn’t make the cut for these posts.

Day three: Crater Lake

The next morning, we packed up the KOA site, and hit the road. Next stop, Crater Lake. Nothing super exciting happened on that drive other than the fact that we thought we were about to drive into a forest fire and there was fire traffic being diverted into the highway we were on. No thanks. We booked a spot at Mazama campgrounds. It was a little pricey at $20-something per night but we got real bathrooms, showers, and the security of knowing that if we screamed at least a billion other people would hear it.

Now, I’ll be real for a second, another reason we booked that spot if because it’s a really important area for Native Americans and I don’t play with spirits. I don’t know a lot about the significance of the area but I know that it’s in my best interest to not mess with anything or find myself in the woods at night.

It was Mahala’s first time camping so I totally made her pitch the tent herself. For anyone who doesn’t know Mahala, I love her to death, but she is not the camping type. She doesn’t like camping bathrooms and having greasy hair but she was an absolute champ about her first time camping. She did a great job on the tent and she even made a campfire herself after I showed her.

Here’s some really dumb looking pictures of the two of us for your amusement. (In my defense, Mahala snapped that picture of me about two second after telling me I had something in my teeth)

After we got settled in, we grabbed a book from the gift store to help us sleep. We got Wild, the one about the lady, Cheryl Strayed, who hiked the PCT, and got into our sleeping bags.

This next part is gonna be long but I don’t want to make another post for it so bear with me.

This book is extremely emotional at the start. I won’t post spoilers but by the end of the first or second chapter we were straight ugly crying.

Now this is the part of the trip where we talked about our feeeeelings and I don’t plan on getting into the details of it, but it was another moment of contentment.

There’s something really great about getting to level with a close friend. To talk about things you’ve been mulling over for months but never found a way to explain and they just get it. We abandoned our tent for the campfire and just talked things out until we got spooked and retreated for the night and fell asleep.

I think that was the most valuable part of the trip for me. Mahala really helped me come to terms with some things that I struggle with, and I got to do the same for her. Up until that point, the contentment was very touch and go. After that, it stuck for the rest of the trip. I felt light. I got to say things that I had been holding onto for too long.

The thing about anxiety is that for me at least, it’s like holding onto a hot coal. Do I know that it’s bad for me to hold onto it for so long? Of course. And it’s just gonna get worse the longer I hold on. But I can’t just let go of it. But getting some friend therapy along with my dirt therapy helped me to just drop those coals.

Everyone needs a friend like Mahala. She seems so ditzy and like a dumb-blond on the surface but she is so much wiser than she shows people.

Alright, I’m gonna put day four in another post and that’ll be the last one! Gold star for sticking with me this long.