the Avenue of the Giants | Old Highway 101
We turned onto the Avenue of the Giants and I fell asleep. I wasn’t impressed. There wasn’t much going on along the side of the road. These trees weren’t that great, just your average side of the road trees and brush.
I woke up to a car door slamming. We’d stopped along the side of the road and when I looked out the window, shaking the groggy backseat sleep out of my eyes, I realized we were there: this was the real Avenue of the Giants.
Now, I know there are bigger trees out there. What is it, the General Sherman, that’s the largest living sequoia? I’m sure that one dwarfs what we were looking up at as we climbed out of the cars, but we’d never seen anything like this before.
On our way to the Avenue we stopped at Drive-Thru Tree Park where, yes, you could drive through a redwood. Sadly, we were worried our Dodge Caravan wouldn’t make it through (even though later a guy totally squeezed his through, and then got his picture taken standing on top of his car as the front stuck out of the tree) so we didn’t get to drive through. We still walked into that tree and climbed all over the others that had been cut or fallen down. There were snapshots, low angle shots, selfies, sunglass selfies, double sun-sunglass selfies, sweep panoramic shots, and super low angle shots that involved laying down and getting sap all over my back.
As cool as watching a van drive through a redwood tree is, its got nothing on the Avenue of the Giants. We like nature, my friends and I, we go outside a fair amount. No one on this trip shies away from a hike, but we’re by no means hardcore outdoorsmen. Still, we all hugged some trees. Or at least tried to.
It isn’t just trees though, which is nice. A few of us took our chances climbing down a path when we spotted water through the trees. Well, path is an exaggeration. I say path, you might say it was for runoff to the riverbed below, while Katie might say, “Don’t break your neck, you’re in Chucks!”
Maybe not optimal climbing footwear, but I made it down there in one piece. I’m not so good eyeballing distance so let’s say we were about thirty feet below the road at that point in this little river valley. The water was moving through pretty well although the riverbed was pretty exposed. Mountains bookended the valley in the distance and this unending wind gusted through. Not quite yelling but still raising our voices to hear each other over the wind, the handful of us that made it down spread out to get different views of the forest reaching up around us.
Standing on the rocks down there I realized why people go fly fishing, why they would stand out in a river all day casting back and forth. There was something about walking on the rocks of the riverbed, being at the low point of that valley with the wind racing through it after emerging from this towering forest of redwoods.
I couldn’t help but stand there, turning slowly to take it all in, a small, goofy smile on my face. It’s natural, I suppose, to have a feeling of utter insignificance when standing on a spot like that; your presence there among trees whose lifespans are measured in millennia, being so brief and unnoticeable.
Or you marvel in it. You can turn slowly and smile and breathe deep as you realize that for this small amount of time you’re walking through these giants, you are a part of something greater, that you are experiencing something of the history of the world you live in.
And like every one of us did at some point walking through the redwoods, you can stop and look up, lose yourself a little in the swaying of those tree tops hundreds of feet and thousands of years above you, and say, “Wow.”
Easing Into Baseball Trip
Well, after three days in San Francisco we failed to ride a streetcar, visit Alcatraz, engage in a high speed chase with Steve McQueen or eat any Rice-A-Roni whatsoever. We did manage to visit the Full House house though, so props there, at least we did something right, and see an old man buck naked walking up Guerrero Street.
There’s no picture, I apologize, he was really trucking with his sweet, white wrinkly ass cheeks waving at us with each step and his old man manhood bouncing from thigh to thigh, and by the time the shock wore off and my camera was out, he’d turned to head uphill away from us.
Another thing we did right? Eased into baseball trip. This is the sixth official year we’ve taken a baseball road trip, a week-long marathon of touristy sightseeing, dangerous levels of alcohol consumption, even more dangerous levels of flatulence and even a few baseball games. You know, when we’re bored. This year we’re doing a West Coast North trip, hitting the Oakland As, San Francisco Giants and Seattle Mariners, which will put our ballpark total at 24 by the end of the trip.
What’s different about this trip is the start; not only did we not see a ballgame the very first day but we spent the first three days in one city. While we still try to pack as much into our limited time in each city and along the drive to each stop, over the course of six years, we’ve learned to slow down a little. We’ve learned some pacing, we’ve learned to slow it down where we can, we’ve learned to drink and enjoy our beer rather then inject the alcohol directly into our veins. We’ve grown up a little. Also, I think New Orleans may have broke us. Twice.
Sorry, baseball trip joke. Maybe I’ll share that story with you one day when you’re older.
See, there’s a a big difference when it comes to Baseball Trip Day One, between driving from Buffalo to Pittsburgh and catching a Pirates game at the comparatively small but immensely beautiful PNC Park, and flying from Buffalo to Kansas City for a Royals game. PNC Park blew me away. It’s on the water, it’s open, it’s a smaller place but not closed in at all. Kansas City? It was hot. I remember that. It was a nice enough park but I don’t remember much of the experience other then there were fountains (not as many as some Royals fans led us to believe, those packs of cheaters), there was enough swamp ass to go around, and at one point Tony announced to most of the outfield section that the fans there were a bunch of hicks.
Its important to ease into baseball trip, which is why this year, after flying from Buffalo to (Las Vegas and then) San Francisco, we settled into the house we rented at Page & Octavia and took our time getting our bearings and picking out someplace to go for dinner. That’s right, not hotel, a house. We rented a classic San Fran house for three days. We fancy. Well, we’re at least coming to terms with the fact that we’re adults. Most of the time.
Haight & Ashbury
The house was in a great location for what we needed; near the highway to get us out to Oakland for the first game, walking distance to a ton of great shops and restaurants along Valencia and its myriad of cross-streets, not to mention Haight & Ashbury, 1709 Broderick Street for the Full House house, Ashbury Park with the hundreds of different things we never had a chance to do, and near enough to the subway to get us out to AT&T Park for the Giants game our last night in town.
We’re all from Buffalo, where you’re always twenty minutes from wherever you’re going and two blocks from the ghetto, that is a fact. So we were in a great location in the city as it turned out we were always withing about a half hour walk from wherever we were going.
Haight & Ashbury was half an hour from the house, and the Full House house was half an hour from there. The Full House house was supposed to be half an hour from home, but then we got cocky and tried to find the house from Mrs. Doubtfire. It was a valiant but failed attempt, although we did get to ride the bus with a wonderful woman who told us the difference between Upper and Lower Haight, recommended a restaurant with “Porky the Piggy on sign” and said we should get out to Marin County if we could. At least she thought it was Marin County.
Then the bus dropped us off at our doorstep. Literally. There was a bus stop right outside our very tall front door that led into our crazy-high ceiling two story house in the classic San Fran style, with the super-hipster backyard in the heart of downtown San Francisco that cost us less then two hotel rooms for three days would have.
I told you it was a great location for us. I think easing into this trip was the right choice.
Now bring on the Redwoods, Portlandia and those sparkly vampire bastards in Washington…
Still Having Trouble with Geography / Revisiting Belgrade
Apparently I’m a bit behind in the news.
A few years ago I posted this terribly written piece about Peter II of Yugoslavia that ended up complaining about my own lack of geographical knowledge specifically and American’s lack of knowledge of anything we can’t blow up in general.
It had started because of the mention of the anniversary of Peter II’s death, and his status as the only foreign dignitary to be buried on US soil. It makes sense, why wouldn’t they be reinterred in their native land if they died while in the US? Still, that’s a cool bit of trivia.
Except it isn’t anymore. And it hasn’t been for a while.
Peter II’s history was interesting to read about; his ascension to the throne of a country not much older than he was, having been formed in the aftermath of World War I, his exile from that country due to World War II, marriage to a Greek princess, his removal by the Communist government that seized power following the war, and his death in 1970 in Colorado after a failed liver transplant. He had one son, Crown Prince Alexander, born during World War II, who would very much like to see the monarchy restored to power in Serbia and who was mentioned as intending to return his father’s remains to Serbia.
| Whet Moser offered a more thorough view of Peter’s life for Chicago Magazine |
I would Google-around from time to time to see if it had happened, but beyond a few articles I found mentioning Prince Alexander’s intentions, I never came across any more details about it. The other day I was looking through the stats for Gas Station Burrito and saw that my post had popped up a couple times for people. It reminded me of the whole thing, so I went looking to see what was going on with Peter II’s remains.
It turned out that Prince Alexander did return the king’s remains to Serbia. Back in January 2013. In May that year Peter was buried alongside his wife, and nearby to his cousin and mother, who herself was reinterred from the Royal Burial Ground at Frogmore where she was buried in 1961. Like I said, I’m a little behind. Look, I had to watch all of Dexter and a good chunk of Sons of Anarchy this year, not to mention read an obscene amount of Amos Walker books, I don’t always have time to keep up on the Google news alerts I have set for the Serbian royal family, I apologize.
As a fan of quirky trivia/historical facts I liked that there was this one foreign king buried in the United States. I can’t be the only one who liked it either. A few things I’d read implied it was a source of pride and comfort for Serbians living in the US, that this symbol of their country was interred here.
Peter II had chosen his interim burial site at St Sava Monastery Church knowing that he couldn’t return to his homeland. I’m pretty nearly positive that the Wikipedia entry was edited after his re-interment in Serbia to refer to St Sava’s as “interim”. I don’t think he ever expected to return. Death from cirrhosis at 47 would imply he wasn’t entirely optimistic about ever making it back to Yugoslavia, living or dead. It didn’t imply he was optimistic about much of anything.
However, as someone who likes the world to not be a horrible place, I enjoy that Crown Prince Alexander has returned with his family to Serbia and worked towards generating a national Serbian spirit in his country. I enjoy that he was able to bring his father home; that after more than forty years since his death, after his country was torn apart by world war, communism and civil war, a man—not even a king, forget the royal titles for a minute—has finally returned to his homeland.
Gas Station Burrito 