This is the part of the trip that isn’t in the travel magazines: showing up so tired, too tired to do all those activities you planned for months.
Yesterday it took 5.5 hours to drive 50 miles from Eureka to Fort Dick (yes, it’s a real place, and I’m currently refraining from the many juvenile jokes darting about in my scattered brain cells.). Why? I don’t really know. There were road stops and road construction. There was the hike along the shore at Clam Beach, with Fig exploring unknown sea vegetation. There was the stop at the redwood visitor center and the walk on the coast, and the many, many people—especially kids—who wanted to say hi and pet Fig.
There was the new friend, Maggie, another solo traveler headed south while we headed north, but we had to stop and talk for an hour. There was the Lady Bird Johnson Redwood Grove that must be seen—how could we pass it?
There were at least ten cat pee stops, a gas fill-up, and a confusing trip to Safeway where I was so tired I couldn’t even figure out what to buy. Pancake mix? Really?
We’re holed up in a fancy new RV with all the trimmings, parked on a couple of quiet acres. That part is the good news. Yesterday I set out on foot for the beach a mile or so away and got menaced by two growling dogs. Some fisher guys in a truck happened along and gave me a ride to the shore, where I finally had my first quiet, away-from-other-people connection with this new and different, grey, foggy ocean.
This morning, after the usual 3 a.m. cat harassment, I went back for a longer walk. It took a solid two hours for my body to start believing we were safe enough to relax, to begin dropping the anxiety of the trip, the trip prep, and the constant low-level worry about the cat. Eventually, the sound of the crashing waves started to rewire my brain—slowly, stubbornly, like the tide.
I found myself giving advice to the birds.
“Fly south,” I told the pelicans and the gulls. “There’s blue sky down there! Fluffy white clouds! Warm water! More fish, probably! This cold grey place is not optimal.”
People have been giving me a lot of unwanted advice lately. I confessed to a relative I hadn’t spoken to in a couple of years that I was worried about my cat and her health conditions. “Maybe it’s time to kill your beloved pet,” I was told, in a trying-to-be-gentle voice. Really? Is she a vet? Has she been in my life for years? Is she qualified to advise this?
To be fair, I’m also quite skilled at giving unwanted advice. My son would verify this; he shies away from any mention of my thoughts and opinions about his life.
As I walked along that cold shoreline, the loop of advice—given and received—kept playing in my head. I just wanted the crashing waves to clear it all out, to give me a blank slate of ease and gratitude and wonder.
The pelicans and seagulls didn’t even glance at me. Like the advice other people give me that doesn’t quite fit my life, they ignored it and kept circling, perfectly at home in the chill and the fog.
But a traveler has got stuff to do. You can’t be near the gorgeous, amazing, fantastic, majestic redwoods and not walk among them. So after lunch, still exhausted, I headed out again to the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park.
Wow, those trees sure are huge. I found a little side trail that wasn’t marked and went down it. It seemed like the crowds were ignoring this trail and I had it all to myself.
I noticed after I arrived that I was wearing a kind of inappropriate clothing item for being in public. My Airbnb host had let me do laundry, so I’d put most of my stuff in the washer and pulled on a beat-up pair of grey sweats that had a significant chunk missing from the legs and the butt. I guess this is a side effect of being single a long time: no one cares if your clothes look like they were chewed up by animals. Honestly, in the heat of Arizona I probably just have a little more air on my butt cheeks. But whoa—I'm not at home, I’m on a trail, and yeah, my flabby right butt cheek is hanging out of these pants.
Good thing the trees are so massive and impressive; I was hoping no one would notice. But did I care enough to go back and change? Nah.
I saw a bench carved out of redwood that was dedicated to an Ernest J. Somebody, and I curled up—butt cheeks to the bench (see, I have manners!)—and promptly fell asleep. When I woke up later I was disoriented and wandered in circles a few times, passing the Ernest J. Somebody bench at least twice before I finally made my way back to the car.
Now I’m holed up with the cat on my lap, too tired to try to give you guys pics. Use your imaginations,por favor,while I take refuse in more slumber.