Guerneville, California

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Guerneville, California

Hanging now at the local café and laundry mat in a small Sonoma town, surrounded by 1300 year-old redwood trees. It’s open mic night here, funded by donations at the door and chocolate bar sales by the headlining band from El Molino High School. After a solid run with some atonal acoustics, they’ve broken down the set for a solo teenager, who pours his heart out over an impassioned version of Dolly Parton’s, “Jolene”.

Only the hammering of a woodpecker signals that other life exists besides you and tree

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We survived day One in the camper. After raising Irish Whiskeys at the Buena Vista, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge onto Highway 1 and headed north to Point Reyes. Hiked to the lookout of an 1800’s lighthouse to catch the sun’s setting glow over the Pacific Ocean….untainted beach as far as one can see, and the occasional wide-eyed deer to greet us from a coastal crag.

It’s not easy to find a parking spot after dark, especially for a large van. One dead end road in Bodega looked promising, until our headlights flashed a weathered cross atop a small hill and your old pal Seumie got the heebie-jeebies. Then another road led to an illuminated schoolhouse, which we discovered the next morning was used for Alfred Hitchcock’s film, The Birds. After some late-night butter-up at an inn, we got our spot.

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Today we had our Special K and hit the road for the rocky shores spanning from Bodega Bay to Jenner. From the cliffs we watched seals barking, surfing through massive waves (much like S did later in the freezing riptides). We made it to the mouth of the Russian River, thanks to the trusted word of Brother Tom, an old hippie who gave us roses from his daughter’s wedding and serenaded us with a bamboo flute, tuned to the blow of the San Francisco foghorn.

Redwoods. Sequoia sempervirens. Most are over 300ft (100m) tall, with trunks 11m (35ft.) wide. These trees swallow you. The silence of their wood swallows you. Only the hammering of a woodpecker signals that other life exists besides you and tree. Magnificent. Awesome. S wanted to take his clothes off and be naked between the trees. It was that good.

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Tonight’s parking spot is by an organic food shop. A couple of sweet women here vetoed an earlier warning about being arrested on the spot for “vagrant” camping (also downplaying the “murders” mentioned to us by the lady at Sonoma Tourist Info Center), and were happy to offer a their lot after we masked the Happy Camper logo on the back of our Chevy with a t-shirt from the store. Off tomorrow to find those natural enclaves where hot water shoots out of the mountains.