Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Day 74 of 117 on our “Go West, Young Man” Two Lane Adventure – Saturday 9/8/18


Even though our stay was short at Turtle Rock RV, it was a great park with awesome access to Gold Beach. As we drove by today, there are people climbing on Turtle Rock! As we drove today, the beach views were stunning, as there was no fog and the sun was shining! We had only 54 miles to drive today, so stopping for pictures was easy to do!

Our first stop was at the Meyers Beach North pull out. Meyers Beach shows just how dramatic the Oregon Coast can be. This beach, set among the towering dunes of the southern coastline, is about halfway between the Pistol River and Cape Sebastian State Park. Meyer's Beach makes up the northern section of the Pistol River State Park. The pistol of Pistol River is thought to be linked with the Rogue River Indian War. Who would have imagined that losing one's sidearm would lead to a name for this beautiful beach area. Pistol River State Scenic Viewpoint, is said to be a photographer's dreamland, its unmarred beach sands, sea grasses, and driftwood stacks create a multitude of scenes, textures, grains and colors.

We were following the Samuel H Boardman State Scenic Corridor. This roadway is a treasure trove full of beautiful little gems just waiting to be explored. It was named in honor of the first Oregon Parks superintendent, the landscape protected here is stunning. With secluded beaches, beautiful vistas, ancient trees, and many miles of the Oregon Coast Trails to wander, there are plenty of reasons to stop.

If you stop in Brookings Oregon visit Harris Beach State Park to see off shore sea stacks. These sea stacks are home to a variety of nesting birds, including the tufted puffin. Brookings is also home to the Chetco River, a fairly short coastal river, from the Siskiyou National Forest. The river divides Brookings from Harbor. The North Bank Road goes up the Chetco River to Azalea Park, a great place to see lush floral gardens. Just after the Chetco River is the Port of Brookings-Harbor, its two basins accommodate commercial and recreational vessels.

We came to the Oregon California border. I wanted to grab a picture of the Oregon Marijuana Shop, just at the border, that was packed with cars … but did not want to miss my California sign!

It’s likely you’ve never heard of Smith River, California, but odds are that’s where your Easter Lily was grown. This fertile land is home to less than 900 residents, but produces about 90% of the world’s Easter lily bulbs, making it the “Easter Lily Capital of the World.” This gorgeous river valley is considered the most ideal spot on Earth for growing Easter lily bulbs due to its nearly perfect growing climate and soil condition. 

In fact, only five Easter lily bulb farms produce up to 14 million bulbs each year. So how did this small strip of coastal land become such a dominant force in the production of Easter Lilies? It all began in 1919 when a man named Louis Houghton introduced some hybrid lily bulbs to the south coast of Oregon. Prior to 1941, nearly all of the Easter lilies plants were imported from Japan, but WWII changed that. By 1945, Houghton’s crop had taken off and there were around 1,200 growers producing bulbs all along the Pacific Coast. That number would steadily drop as growers found the bulbs difficult to grow commercially. Unlike other crops that are planted, left to grow, and harvested later, Easter Lily bulbs must be planted, harvested and shipped within a span of three months. 

That means in order to force the bulbs to bloom in time for Easter, they require 40 days of a forced artificial winter by refrigeration followed by a brief growing period in a high-temperature greenhouse. The growing schedule is crucial since the value of the bulbs drops considerably even one day past Easter. To complicate matters, Easter doesn’t fall on the same day every year and can vary by as much as five weeks, so timing is everything.

Smith River is a river flowing from the Klamath Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The Smith River flows generally northwest, entering the Pacific Ocean near the community of Smith River. The river was named for the explorer Jedediah Smith.

We came into Crescent City and arrived at Sunset Harbor RV, our home for the night. We will explore Crescent City more later.







We discovered that we could exit our park, go one block and follow Howland Hill Road into the Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park. We decided to take an afternoon trip through, before we enjoyed dinner and a quiet evening. Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park is the last in a long string of redwood parks that stretch up Northern California's coast. A few miles inland from the ocean, the park is densely forested with huge ancient trees. In fact, it contains seven percent of all the old-growth redwoods left in the world. The park was named for Jedediah Strong Smith, who in the 1820s became the first white man to explore the interior of northern California. The park was established in 1929 with a small parcel donated to Save the Redwoods League by the family of lumberman Frank Stout.

Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park’s 10,000 acres are managed cooperatively by the National Park Service and California State Parks, as are Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and Redwood National Park. A World Heritage Site and International Biosphere Reserve, Redwood National and State Parks protect 45 percent of California’s remaining old-growth redwoods, an area almost four times the size of Manhattan.

For someone who has never seen one, a Redwood tree must seem to be something from a tall tale. Averaging eight feet to as much as twenty feet in diameter, and some as tall as three hundred feet. That is a tree taller than the Statue of Liberty, from base of the pedestal to the tip of the torch. A tree larger around and through than a Greyhound bus. Absolutely the largest living thing on earth.

We stopped at the Visitor’s Center after we drove through the forest. We learned a great deal about the Redwoods, from the Ranger and watching a film.

A live redwood that is knocked over will attempt to continue growing via its limbs. If undisturbed, the limbs pointing up will turn into trees in their own right, and this is indeed the source of many row groups of trees.

Cathedral or family groups of trees are simply trees that have grown up from the living remains of the stump of a fallen redwood, and since they grew out of the perimeter, they are organized in a circle. If you looked at the genetic information in a cell of each of these trees, you would find that they were identical to each other and to the stump they sprang from. They are clones!

The redwood burls are another survival strategy. Their growth is held in check by the presence of signals in a living redwood. If the tree should die, or even be stressed, say by low rainfall or fire, the signal weakens or vanishes and the burl will burst forth into new life. Burls kept in a shallow pan of water will grow almost indefinitely. They can also continue on to become a full grown redwood tree.

Lastly, there is the conventional reproduction system of seeds. About 20% of today's present trees sprang from seeds. The rest came from one of the various cloning-based proliferation strategies. Genetically, it's the same tree after each successive cloning process. 80% of the trees now growing were produced in one these cloning processes.

If you connect these two facts, you will come to realize that some of those trees out there could be the last in a 20,000 or 30,000 year (or more) line of the same tree reproducing itself over and over again! Genetically, they are the same tree that grew from a seed all those centuries ago!

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