{"id":4851,"date":"2011-02-09T18:22:53","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T18:22:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/?p=4851"},"modified":"2017-07-22T14:33:29","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T13:33:29","slug":"day-207-californication-and-the-land-of-giants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/expedition-updates\/day-207-californication-and-the-land-of-giants\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 207 : Californication and the Land of Giants"},"content":{"rendered":"

High point: Pacific Coast Highway 101<\/p>\n

Low Point: Not being able to drive this road everyday<\/p>\n

No point: Being anywhere else<\/p>\n

What not to say at a border point: California border lady \u2018\u2019Do you have any fruit or vegetables on board Sir?\u2019\u2019, James \u2018\u2019No, only the three in the back.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Risk point: Getting 52 new troops in a game of Risk against Ben Battye.\u00a0 Surely that only happens once in a lifetime?<\/p>\n

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Wolf spot: one<\/p>\n

Today we hit highway 101 baby!\u00a0 When you think of the US you can be forgiven for thinking of McDonalds, shopping malls, drive-thrus, plastic fantastics and freeways.\u00a0 The 101 however is about as close to nature as you can get.\u00a0 The route is still mostly miles and miles of wild, open and beautiful country that makes you feel incredibly spoilt at having it almost all to yourself.\u00a0 From the deserted rugged beaches with their white spray hitting the road, to the dense forests of gigantic redwoods reminding you how insignificant you really are in the big scheme of things.<\/p>\n

Mingling in amongst this is the small town America we were all looking forward to.\u00a0 The caravan parks, logging companies, diners and souvenir shops all add up to make this \u2018\u2019have a nice day y\u2019all\u2019\u2019 land.\u00a0 The cute cottages, tin huts and wooden shacks have gardens full of all sorts of weird and wonderful contraptions, artifacts and general pointless bric-a-brac.\u00a0 Stopping off between the gorgeous coastline and the \u2018big\u2019 trees for bottomless cups of coffee and an oversized plate of lemon meringue pie made our taste of Highway 101 complete.\u00a0 The best thing about these towns is that the journalists find us. Making a quick lunch stop a lovely reporter from the Curry County Reporter came and interviewed us for the local paper!<\/p>\n

The day was topped off by a drive through the \u2018Avenue of the Giants\u2019 with legend Ben Battye at the wheel.There\u2019s big trees and then there\u2019s really BIG trees.\u00a0 California\u2019s magnificent coast Redwoods <\/strong>can grow more than\u00a0320 feet high (about as tall as a 30-storey building), with trunks more than 24 feet in diameter and can live for more than\u00a02,000 years.\u00a0 The avenue consists of 30 miles of Redwoods and Jurassic Park and Return of the Jedi were both filmed here. It was light when we went into the woods but it soon got dark as the sun went down\u2026 we\u2019ve all seen the films, everyone knows you never stop in the woods, especially not in a dark, dark wood full of trees that make you feel like they\u2019re watching you. We were in a magical world somewhere between a horror movie, an arcade game and a fairy tale.\u00a0 Sure the trees were closing in behind us we were all relieved when we finally we stopped in Garberville, boy this town is friendly.<\/p>\n

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Road trip?\u00a0 I think so!<\/p>\n

Amy<\/p>\n

[flickr album=72157625900772043 num=30 size=Square]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

High point: Pacific Coast Highway 101 Low Point: Not being able to drive this road everyday No point: Being anywhere else What not to say at a border point: California border lady \u2018\u2019Do you have any fruit or vegetables on board Sir?\u2019\u2019, James \u2018\u2019No, only the three in the back.\u2019\u2019 Risk point: Getting 52 new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expedition-updates","category-stage-7-vancouver-to-phoenix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4851"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4858,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4851\/revisions\/4858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}