After seeing all the National Park redwoods north of Eureka, today was the day to travel south on the Avenue of the Giants for a more commercialized version of the redwoods. The Avenue of the Giants runs parallel to US-101 for about 31 miles, about 30 miles south of Eureka. As you go further south on the 101, it begins to look more like an Interstate. There are fewer sections going through towns, and more sections actually called Freeways. Which is why tomorrow, we will be leaving the 101 and moving to the coast on CA-1S. But more about that tomorrow.
     The trees on the Avenue of the Giants are certainly as big, if not a little bigger in some cases that the ones north of Eureka, but the trails are not as pristine as in the National Park . There's a lot of graffiti carved into the fallen logs, that is not seen in the parks to the north, but the forest is still quite beautiful. We spent a lot of time hiking today, and easily passed over 12,000 steps. Jody's friends call her a "hiking machine' and she certainly is that. She just keeps going and going, with no signs of slowing down.
     The Avenue of the Giants Auto Tour is described in a pamphlet you get when you enter. There are 8 designated stops along the way, with trails marked out at most, and something of interest to do. We stopped at most of them, at least the ones that had hiking trails. We hiked and took pictures all day. It's a little easier to get coffee on the Avenue of the Giants, and our first coffee stop was at the Eternal Tree House Cafe & Gift Shop. The Tree House was hollowed out of the base of a living redwood and is a 20 foot room inside a 22500 year old tree. Pretty cool! The coffee at the cafe was good, the gift shop, not so much. There was a lot of Big Foot souvenirs that we didn't find very interesting . But across the street was the Redcrest Resort, and their gift shop had some great t-shirts!
     The second commercial establishment was the Shine Drive-Thru Tree Auto Park & Gift Shop, where for $6 for a car, or $4 for a motorcycle, you could ride your vehicle through a natural opening in a living tree. Well, mostly natural opening, it seemed to have a little help getting big enough for a car. There was a line of motorcycles behind us, a group from Washington State. Jody took a few pictures of me on the bike, and one of the Washington guys took pictures of us both. It was fun, and you can't visit the redwoods without driving through a tree. There is a second drive-thru tree in Legget that we will visit tomorrow. There were some interesting tree houses made from redwood logs, but the gift shop was just more of the same Big Foot stuff.
     The third commercial stop we made was at the Chimney Tree Grill. The restaurant looked interesting, but it was getting too close to dinner, so we just visited the Chimney Tree, and sure enough, the center had been burned out back in 1918, and you could enter the base and see right up through the chimney opening in the top of a still living tree .
     By the time we reached the bottom of the Avenue of the Giants, it was after 3:00. The original plan was to head back over to the coast and take the long way back to Eureka via Mattole Rd and the Petrolia-Ferndale Highway, but it was getting late and we still wanted to stop at Walmart and Walgreens's back in Eureka. So we turned around and rode the Avenue of the Giants road non-stop back to the 101 and on into Eureka.
     We were looking for a Walmart to pick upo a few supplies, and the Walmart App store locator showed it was about a mile south of the hotel on the 101. When we found it, imagine our surprise when we discovered the Walmart sign on the front of the Bayshore Mall. Ane when we went inside, it was a typical mall with all the typical mall stores, except in addition, one of the anchor stores was Walmart. Strange!
     Between Walmart and Walgreen's, we noticed an Applebee's so rather than try to figure out where to eat tonight, we chowed down on some good old-fashioned chain restaurant food. Tomorrow we are off to Willits, CA. The original plan was to go to Fort Bragg to ride the Skunk Train, but according to the website, there is some damage to one of the tunnels, so the Skunk Train is running out of Willits for now. So we will drive down the coast tomorrow, turn inland to Willits and board the train on Tuesday morning. It should be fun!

133.3 miles today
11,087.5 miles total

0.0 gallons today
264.824 gallons total