Officer Crocodile Dundee

Shelter Cove, California 

You get a very strange feeling driving though the Redwoods. It's very dark down there at the trunk level.



But.....wait....Officers in Independence, Missouri, responded to a call on a Saturday evening about a large alligator lurking on the embankment of a pond. An officer called a state conservation agent, who advised him to shoot the alligator because there was little that conservation officials could do at that time. As instructed, an officer shot the alligator, not once but twice, but both times the bullets bounced off -- because the alligator was made of cement.The property owner told police later that he placed the ornamental gator by the pond to keep children away.

Policemen can be cruel to their own. The Officer involved is almost certain to be tagged with a humorous but non-flattering nickname. Maybe "Gators Fear Me" or "Crocodile Dundee".

We spent the day cruising the redwoods and the coastal mountain back roads. We had hoped to see some tide pools after our long mountain drive to Shelter Cove. None of our pictures of the coastal tide pools or redwoods were very good due to the rain and fog. .

We did get some good flower pictures. They grow well in the dank, moist climate that redwoods prefer.

My humanities professor call this type of image "Chiaroscuro"  which sounds a lot like something you need to make Cuban Spanish bean soup.

 

We see many medical marijuana stores in this area, even in the smallest towns. I look into the laws and find that I need a California drivers license to assuage my anxiety or treat Mrs. Phred's back pains.

I think all the hippies from the 1967 Summer of Love must have moved to this area. We see many older ladies with long braided gray hair. They seem happy and pleasant. Not overweight. The men have strange beards, long hair and odd pants. I want to live here with my people, but Mrs. Phred wants more from life....

 Happy Trails....

If You're Going to Hike...

Garberville, California

The Redwoods always provide a dramatic and interesting backdrop for a long walk.

As we leave Garberville and the interesting people in the local grocery stores, Mrs. Phred tells me to say goodbye to "my people". She's not going to settle here, regardless of what I may think about it.

Don't you just hate it when people say "irregardless" and use it to mean the same thing as regardless. It's a double negative. They should be saying "not irregardless" then it would be a triple negative meaning....wait...I just confused myself.

We're in Eureka, California. We went to see the new Pirate novie with Johnny Depp and paid $5 for a small popcorn. I can remember when a small popcorn was 5 cents...call me a fossil...

When you walk 5 or 6 miles through the redwoods, you see fallen trees and stumps that might have gone down 200 or 300 years ago.  Trees and ferns are growing on the dead roots. These trees are so tall that they can't suck sap up to the treetops like other trees. They can only grow in very wet and humid places where the treetops can suck moisture from the air.

We'll probably do several more redwood hikes. We're in Eureka, California. They have tennis courts and good shopping. I want to buy some nice wine glasses and some JB Weld. Another paddle came off the washer/dryer and epoxy seems to be the permanent fix..

When we pulled out this morning, I had a  major "senior moment". I really couldn't remember which side of the road I was supposed to be driving on. Normally, this type of lapse in the past has been associated with my many mini-strokes...You have to laugh.....

Along the Pacific Coast

Sarasota, Florida

Sometimes you feel like a Hobbit. Then you hear a bustle in a hedgerow. It's just a spring clean for the May Queen. This is a medium-sized redwood in the Ladybird Johnson grove. The human figure is 6 feet in height and approximately the same in girth.

These flowers grow in the dark redwood "groves". Sometimes they catch a sunbeam.

The California coast has lots of rocks.

In Oregon, driftwood takes on strange shapes.


This is a "Stellar's" Jay. Stellar also has some seals named after him.

We went out of our way to find some of Oregon's tidal pools.

It was worth the search.

The waves carve strange fin shapes facing the Pacific.

These birds like the safety of a rock face. The white stuff is bird dukey. (Sweetheart, I'd like to kiss you but your breath smells like dukey.)

I'm picking way too many pictures for Calendar candidates.

The Redwoods

National and State Redwood Parks

Somewhere along the visit to the Redwoods, high over the California Beach, we meet a retired American Army tanker. He's traveling light and camping out of his car. He reminds me of the Beatles song," all the lonely people...where do they all come from?" We talk about the Bonus Marchers from WWI, Patton, Killer Whales...ships and shoes and sealing wax, walruses and kings...

He tells us that the pink flowers on the trees on the redwood groves are rhododendrons. He's been camping here for weeks. Someone broke into his car and stole his clothes and tools. As we drive away, I feel grateful for Mrs Phred and very lucky not to be alone.

The first place we stopped for a hike was the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, She was an interesting Lady. She limited billboards on the interstate highways, made the auto junkyards put up fences and beautified the Austin Riverbank. I always thought that she owned the Wake Island Facilities Management Corporation and made millions feeding aircrews who had to stop on Wake Island on the way to Viet Nam.

Robert McNamara died today. He was 92. He was the architect of the Viet Nam war. A bright man, a Berkley graduate, CEO of Ford, Secretary of Defense for both Kennedy and Johnson. His book in the 1990s admitting the his own stupidity in pursuing that war kicked off yet another firestorm of controversy

I wrote a paper in 1965. My conclusion, after watching the British in the 1950s in Malaysia was that we would need 5,000,000 American ground forces to prevail in that war. That was based on the British experience. It's a shame that a stupid 2nd Lt could figure this out and a whiz kid like Bob McNamara was apparently clueless. Of course, the British victory in Malaysia, based on a 10:1 superiority of of conventional forces to insurgents was on an island with no resupply routes. Viet Nam had the long Laos border.

The tanker guy said that this is a foxglove.

The redwood forests grow along the coast as well as slightly inland. The beaches here were rich with a very fine "flour gold" , which was difficult to recover.

The California Coast

Trinidad, California

Here's a picture of our RV park. The redwoods are tall and thick.


We went to the Trinidad beach in the morning. The temperature never got much above 55 degrees F., but the fog finally cleared a little in the afternoon.


We drove to a kind of junky place in Eureka in the California. It was called King Salmon Avenue. We were struck by the work of a roadside artist. His (or her) website was rust.lust.com.

These were strange, large iron sculptures...covered with rust. The artist took off for the 4th of July.

In the afternoon we visited Patrick's Point State Park. We bought a little rock cod at a local fish market to cook for dinner. I'm rubbing it with sea salt and pepper and serving it with lemon and butter.

Patrick's Point had some nice views of the Pacific.

We saw this seal sleeping on a rock at Patrick's Point State Park.

The viewpoints require you to climb down steep paths. I stepped in a hole and fell again, but this time I didn't damage the camera. Mrs. Phred gave me an odd look as I climbed back to my feet. I begin to wonder if she has doubts about my competence.

At another point we saw sixty or eighty sleeping seals. A bald eagle was floating motionless on the strong updrafts at about 600 feet. Suddenly it folded its wings and dive bombed down to retrieve a fish.

Mrs. Phred wants to watch the Wimbledon finals in the morning. Personally, I've booked a fishing trip. This seal was in the marina where the boats go out.

Whoa! We can't go any further West

Trinidad, California

It took five hours to drive though the California Mountains from the Lassen National Park to the Pacific coast. The RVs V-10 was constantly wound up to about 4,000 RPM either braking or climbing though the mountains, generally following the Trinity River.

California is a garden of Eden,
a paradise to live in or see;
But believe it or not,
you won't find it so hot
If you ain't got the do re mi.
-Woody Guthrie

The Emerald Forest RV park is on the Pacific Coast. The temperature dropped forty degrees as we approached the coast. It's deliciously cool. The RV park is thick with redwoods. One stump, about eight feet in diameter, is sprouting a new tree. Redwoods are very hard to kill. Apparently the area was logged in the past. The new trees are very thick and tall. There are 650 of them in the twelve acre park.


Mrs. Phred was hoping that Andy Roddick was going to win the semi-finals against the Scottish player, Andy Murray, at Wimbledon today. I'm sure that the Queen of England was disappointed with the outcome, but that's the way the ball bounces. Princess Firecloud is happy, anyway. We're watching the reruns at 6PM Pacific time.

We're about 250 miles north of San Francisco on the coast in the middle of the Redwood forests. We want to visit San Francisco again...it's been 44 years. Maybe it's changed a little.

You can hear the seals bellow in some of the RV parks nearer to the ocean.

I read Hunter S. Thompson's first book, "Hell's Angels" in San Francisco. I sort of remember his diatribe about white trash with English origins rolling up to the Pacific beach in the 1930's with a feeling of being cheated and and sense of unsatisfied restlessness.

They still operate strict immigration stations here in California. It's very much like Europe before they became the European Union. They pull all the cars and RVs over and inspect your refrigerator before they let you in.