Road Trip Highlights: Things That Live Up To Their Names

"Shangri-La Trailer Park" did not appear to fall into this category, at least not from the highway. Crescent City's newspaper, the Daily Triplicate, gave us pause... Surely more than that, guys? And "Latitudes: An Oasis," which looked like a fairly standard beach motel, still has us flummoxed.

Even the most pedestrian monikers don't make the cut sometimes: sure, the Oregon Caves are aptly (if unimaginatively) named, but Crater Lake is technically a caldera. After exhaustive field research and careful deliberation, we can say with confidence that the following three locations have earned their appellations:

1. Tall Trees Grove in Redwood National Park: where 80-year-old big leaf maples are shrubby underbrush, and 8-year-old human hikers are minuscule.


This one would take nine Mikalas, arms outstretched, to reach all the way around it:


The Tall Trees Grove used to have the tallest tree in the world in it, until the top ten feet of the 367.8-foot giant got knocked off in a storm. They sell postcards of it at the ranger station with "WORLD'S TALLEST TREE" emblazoned across the bottom. And if you look really closely you can see that right above that it says "Once the" in tiny little type. (The tallest tree in the world right now is also in Redwood National Park, though not in the Tall Trees Grove. It's called Hyperion, and it is 379.1 feet tall.)

We hiked through the heart of the grove and then camped on the gravely banks of Redwood Creek. That night we had ramen for dinner and then lay on our backs counting shooting stars. We pointed out the Milky Way to Simon, but he was skeptical. "If that's our galaxy," he said, "then we're just floating in space!" Um... well, yes.

In the morning we went skinny dipping in the creek and basked in the sun 'til we were dry. When the day hikers started to appear, we put our clothes back on and hiked out.

2. Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: absolutely guaranteed to cure anyone suffering from Fern Deficit Syndrome.


3. Trees of Mystery, Klamath, California: I have probably driven by this cheesy roadside attraction a dozen times -- in my younger days I traveled this stretch of 101 at least once a year -- and once even parked in the parking lot long enough to wind up with one of their classic yellow and red signs wired onto the front bumper of my orange VW bug. (They don't do this to you anymore -- someone must have complained about having their car transformed into a roving billboard without permission. They do have a supply of free signs stacked near the door of the gift shop, but no wire, alas.)

But I had never been inside to view the Mysteries that are available to those with a $14 ticket. These included a gondola ride through the forest to a hilltop with a nice view; a series of chainsaw sculptures depicting the life & times of Paul Bunyon, and a tour of unusually-shaped redwood trees, each helpfully labeled: "Elephant Tree," "Candelabra," "Lightning Tree," etc. Some of the more subtle formations had big wooden arrows pointing at them, in case you had trouble spotting them.


We learned at the gift shop that the place was started by one woman over 50 years ago, and it was easy to imagine an iron-willed matriarch leading us through the woods pointing out her favorite burls and twisted trunks. After I got over the weird feeling of being told what to look at and how to feel about it, I started to enjoy seeing the forest through her quirky, reverent eyes.

One of the more elaborate interpretive installations surrounds the Cathedral Tree, a popular wedding venue.


We loved it that she had piped in a voice warbling "I think that I will never see a poem as lovely as a tree," but also posted (as a test case, perhaps?) a poem carved on a huge cross-section of log. The poem ends, "Sink down, Oh traveler, on your knees / God stands before you in these trees." Um... well, yes. If you want to put it that way. (Though I myself found it far easier to connect with the Divine in the Tall Trees Grove.)

So what's the Mystery? We identified several. Simon theorized that "the mystery is why they call it a mystery!" We were somewhat mystified by the atrocious quality of the food at the Forest Cafe -- especially when compared with the phenomenal decor. After we read the book of Paul Bunyon stories we bought in the gift shop, we thought maybe the mystery was why someone who felt that way about trees would choose to honor this arboreal mass murderer with a 50-foot-tall talking, waving, blinking statue outside her park.


For me the mystery is harder to articulate, but it's something to do with the desire (which I totally get) to create an experience that guides people through the world as you see it, to draw them in to the Mysteries you have discerned in the world around you. And what a delicate operation it is to do that without overriding their own connection to those very Mysteries. It's about the power of human beings to see stories in the natural world -- to impose them upon it, even. Amd it's about the power of a thousand-year-old tree to fully embody those stories -- yet transcend them completely.