The family opposite are not any quieter in the morning, nor any less friendly, offering me their leftover tortilla chips for breakfast while they pack up. They are still trying to place my accent and the little girls come over to say superfluous hellos to get me to say something.
I overhear the younger lady, presumably the mother and also the main vocal force of the family, say that she once took in a cat which, on the first day she had it, crapped on her bible. I think about telling her how I once crapped on a yak, but given her frequent references to the bible, I decide she may not share my sense of humour.
The boys had still not risen and are refusing to. ‘Get Up!’ shouts the mom, volume no obstacle, but the boys won’t budge even after a crescendo of orders to arise. Eventually though, the sound waves defeat their attempts to rest in and the eldest, who I have learned is a fourteen year old called Marcus, emerges from his tent visibly cranky. I missed the prevocational context, but he starts shouting at one his younger sisters ‘shithead, shithead, shithead’ and then, after his mother tells him to stop swearing, ‘kaka, kaka, kaka’. ‘You’ve lost your allowance for a month’, shouts his mom, which elicits whispering under Marcus’s breath. ‘Stop whining you fourteen year old baby!’ bellows Mom. ‘Yeah, stop whining, you fourteen year old baby!’ repeats his sister. ‘Stop that’, exclaims Mom.
The older woman, presumably the Aunty, seems to have much more control over the kids, and is calmer, but only marginally. ‘Did you accuse me of smoking dope?’ she asks Marcus.
‘I said you were smoking a roach’.
‘Don’t accuse me of smokin’ no roaches!’
‘I said roach, not roaches’, protests Marcus.
Aunty, who walks awkwardly due to a slight back defect or injury, asks Marcus if he wants to box. ‘I’ll come at you like a steamboat!’ she says in reinforcement.
‘I’ll come at you like a spider monkey!’ replies Marcus. It’s not clear if Aunty knows what these are, and there follows a discussion about what other fantastic creatures he might come at her like. It is still not 9 a.m.
Eventually I leave them to it to go down to the lake to take a dip. However, it is not perfect swimming, as the edge of the lake is a flooded end of the car park. There are plenty of hiking trails that surround the lake which come recommended by my Frommer’s Guidebook but, as I am keen to get to Redwood to find a camping spot, I only go for a short walk along the lakeside watching the water-skiers pierce the waters across the lake.
The drive to Redwood National Park should take three or four hours, but I find that the area designated as the park, which is an amalgamation of State Parks, doesn’t cover all of the attractions the area has to offer. I stop first at the ‘Loghouse’, a cosy tunnel bungalow carved out of a felled Redwood, next to a roadside giftshop. Nearby is the ‘Grandfather Tree’, a very wide Redwood in the grounds of a giftshop stopover. Next, I stop to see the living ‘Chimney Tree’, a hollow Redwood with a doorway which is seemingly alive, though I am not sure if this is just the greenery growing out of it. The gift shop here is closed though.
After discovering that all of the National Park campsites are full for the weekend, I am directed to a first come, first serve site hidden in the woods by Dry Lagoon Beach. Though it does have drop toilets, the site is deep in the woods and I have to walk a dense forest trail to get to my pitch. At $20, it isn’t much cheaper than a private campsite would be.
I got some pot noodles and tins of fruit and tuna, but with no cooking utensils and no can opener, I have to make do with a granola bar dinner.
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| at Lake Mendocino |
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| the roads of Redwood |
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