Last night we stayed at The Scotia Inn1 in Scotia, CA. The rooms are a bit dated, but it was a nice place and an interesting building. The place was built in 1923 in the small town of Scotia to house Pacific Lumber Company workers, guests and tourists. Below are some photos of the lobby.
On the agenda for today was to drive along the Avenue of the Giants to see more of the coast redwoods and then make our way down to Fort Bragg. Once we got on State Route 1, the driving got a lot more interesting. That is the curviest road I’ve ever been on and, in some cases, appears as though you could just drive into the ocean if you make just the slightest wrong move – especially considering there are no guardrails in many of the places you’d expect to see them. Driving slowly enough, though, should keep you safe.
Once again, the old-growth redwoods are just unbelievably huge! I really can’t stress that enough. These photos below aren’t really that great, but they serve a purpose. The second photo gives a good comparison between the sizes of “normal” trees in one of these forests versus the giant, dark lines of the redwoods. The third is just a couple of guys who had climbed up on a stump and when someone walking by asked what they were doing, their response was “Oh, just moving into my new apartment.” Hearty laughter ensued.
The photo captioned “Eye-Level” is actually what I saw at eye-level standing in front of one of these things that had fallen. This particular tree, through some crude estimates obtained from counting paces along it, appears to have been about 240 feet tall! One of the “smaller” trees that had fallen in this forest had had a quarter cut out of it to make a fairly comfortable bench. These forests are just beautiful in so many ways.
Speaking of huge, amazing things: the Pacific is also pretty huge and amazing too! After a rather harrowing drive along the Shoreline Highway (CA-1) with more curves than probably even tens of feet of straight road, this is what we were greeted with. As we drove along, we encountered more and more similarly breathtaking views.
Tonight we’re staying at the Beachcomber Motel in Fort Bragg. This is a view out our hotel’s back door. Hopefully I’ll be able to post more tomorrow. Mendocino, Sonoma and West Marin counties, here we come!
I don’t have any decent panorama material at the moment, but here are some nice sunset pics.
Footnotes
- As of 2019-02-19 The Scotia Inn is closed. See the Redwood Times article.