Magic of the Trees – Humboldt County, Northern California, October 14, 2024
It is one of our favorite places on earth – The Redwoods. Here in Humboldt is a scenic drive through the redwood forest where some of the oldest and largest trees on earth reside. We came here about 2 years ago on the motorcycle and were so awed by this place we knew it was someplace we wanted to revisit. I am so glad we did. The second time we were equally taken with the natural beauty. These trees can live for 2,000 years and are the largest living thing on earth. It is one of the few old growth forests left on earth which old growth is anything considered over 150 years old. Of all the remaining forests, old growth in the primarily found in Canada, Brazil, and Russia. Left in the world only 35% are considered old growth and it makes up the space of Europe.
These old growth forests are incredibly valuable to protecting against climate change due to their ability to trap carbon dioxide. Apparently the older a tree gets the more it can house making them critical to our current climate change crisis. In addition, they support an unusually large group of biodiversity found nowhere else on earth. Hiking here was spectacular to say the least. Nothing makes you and your first world problems feel small than standing in the middle of this magical forest for a few days.
However, due to our limited weather window, we had to keep moving. We drove through northern California up to the city of Eureka. On the motorcycle we didn’t spend much time here and when we drove through this time the poverty, trash, and homelessness was surprising. As soon as you pass over the border to California the trash on the side of the freeway increases significantly. Then once we got the Humboldt State Park all the little towns along the Avenue of the Giants had shocking levels of poverty. People were living in broken down campers covered in tarps, tents, and then just some on the streets.
As we made our way up to Eureka it got worse. There was a homeless person on literally every street corner and neither of us felt terribly safe. Originally, we had planned to stay in Eureka but after our quick trip up to the local Walmart we quickly decided against it. I was under the misconception that San Francisco had the worst homelessness problem in the state but based on percent per 100,000 Eureka is one of the worst places. As is read a bit more about this 90% of the California people are US citizens and were born in the same county in which they now have become homeless. This goes against what the media has been pushing that they are criminal immigrants. The other scary statistic I found is that 60% of all Americans are one paycheck away from losing their housing.
The top 5 states for homelessness are California 181,000, New York 103,200, Florida 30,756, Washington 28,035, and Texas 27,377. Of the main reasons, over half is due to addiction or lack of affordable housing. Of the top cities, New York tops the list (not San Francisco) followed by Los Angeles. Thus far federal housing assistance has been one of the most successful solutions to combating a crisis, which is truly sad to see. Much of the poverty and housing situations we have seen has been as bad if not worse than anything we experienced in the islands.
Since Eureka wasn’t an option, we started making our way back south and decided to stay a few days at Bear River Casino. It was a free stop we could park for a few days while we sought out the next campsite. Harvest Host has become a new resource we were going to try out allowing you to camp at some of the local wineries. Hopefully it will work out since we passed a lot of campers heading south making the camping there more and more competitive. I guess we will see.
Cement Donkeys 