I Saw a Tree: When a Vacay Goes Really Bad, Go Home

You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!

Photo by Josh Carter on Unsplash

Sometimes the cure is worse than what ails you

I have rarely been so damned happy to get home. A funny-not funny adventure to see one of the last great stands of trees in America before they are gone.

Last night my pupper Mika and I piled out of the car and ran into the house. She veered left to drink out of the guest toilet (long drive, she hates doggie water bowls). I ran upstairs to open the house to the cool woods, which had been crisped last week with temps close to 100F.

I’m now on a vacay from my vacay.

Once again I was reminded of how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE where I live. I’m going to try to sell the house next spring, but damn it I love where I live.

The plan was to give myself five days to enjoy the great sequoias around Crescent City. I’d visited there in 2022 and the experience was memorable.

I have surgery on my right foot a week from today. I wanted a tree break. Also, I was going to do my final edits on a series of articles for my client in the early am while lazing among the trees during the days.

Fine seafood at least once. Once. But mostly, meditate and soak in the sequoias. Mental medicine.

That was the plan.

Photo by Tyler Shaddix on Unsplash

I used Booking.com to find an AirBnB in Coos Bay which is on the way along Highway 101, then a pet-friendly motel in Crescent City. Packed the car and headed out. Humming.

Can’t wait.

I landed in Coos Bay around 3:30 pm on Tuesday, without the requested phone number and email of the owner “just in case.” It took a half hour wandering the hilly side streets to find the house. By then I had a very full bladder.

I had a code to get in, right? Relief was a mere door code away.

The code didn’t work. Tried it six times, didn’t work. Then I called, or tried to call, Booking.com.

Booking.com’s AI system is specifically designed to do two things: prevent you from speaking to a real human AT ALL COSTS, and to hear certain words that it interprets in its own special stupidity to mean that you clearly don’t need a real person.

Their AI decided that I was the owner having trouble with my own property. This despite my screaming- yes screaming- REAL PERSON REAL PERSON REAL PERSON into my phone.

Meanwhile I really have to pee.

After a ten-minute hold I finally got a real person who proceeded to hang up on me as soon as I said I have a bit of an emergency.

So I got to repeat this maddening process, this time with a twenty-minute hold, before I got a real person.

I explained the situation. She said “So SO sorry. We’ll call the owner.”

And put me on hold. Mind you I’m sitting in a strange neighborhood, on a steep hill, in someone’s driveway, houses close in, no public facilities anywhere and I HAVE TO PEE.

Which I explained to to the rep when she came back on. “So SO sorry (I don’t give a shit).”

They couldn’t reach the owner. By then I’d sent multiple emails to the owner through Booking.com. No luck.

Did I say I had to pee?

They also multiple emails to the owner. It would take forty-five minutes (did I say I had to pee?) and then they would cancel the night, and their new email would give me the next set of instructions. I’d have to find another place.

After about twenty minutes, the owner drove up. She’d received no emails, no phone calls from Booking.com and was very surprised. I told the Booking.com rep she’d arrived, we’re all good, and hung up.

By this time my knees are superglued together so I limped awkwardly, hopefully, towards the locked door.

The owner couldn’t make the door code work, either.

Meanwhile, my bladder…

Finally after a few more agonizing minutes, the door popped open. I disappeared into the toilet, beyond grateful.

The place was charming. Every available snack, every imaginable option for both play and food for dog, cat and person alike. Like staying at your favorite aunt’s house.

But no work area. The only thing available was a table so small that my laptop covered the entire space, with no plug nearby for power. There was nowhere to spread paperwork out.

My client and I had to nix our morning work session.

No worries. I’ve got this.

I packed up and headed to Crescent City the next morning.

Highway 101 is a lesson in contrasts. Houses and businesses falling into terrible disrepair. The only new things for miles around are big TRUMP VANCE signs tacked onto crumbling porches, fence posts and front doors.

Then there are stretches of coastal properties, some of which are so grand that the gate house alone would comfortably settle a family of eight.

We wonder why folks are mad.

Finally I rolled into Northern California, two words which always held a certain magic for me. Misty Mount Shasta. Endless coastines. Cute blonde surfer dudes from Eureka. Magical trees.

That was forty years ago. It shows. Especially on my face.

Crescent City, despite being the gateway to the redwoods, is a dying town. The buildings sport peeling and chipped paint. The whole place has an air of defeat. Fast food places are cheery, but that can’t be said for the motel that accepted dogs.

Tiffany, who checked me in, was pleasant and helpful, especially after I complimented her on her earrings. I requested a room towards the back since the motel is right on 101 and traffic is loud. I hoped for the best.

Then she announced that the deal I’d gotten on Booking.com wasn’t what I’d have to pay (this despite the wording on the website “What you’ll pay”). The motel wanted another fifty dollars for the first night and an additional $20 for each night afterwards because I have a big dog.

She’s big, but also quiet, chill, and well-trained. Apparently this place has a history of velociraptor dogs which had destroyed rooms, television sets, remotes and worse.

Today’s responsible American traveler, I guess.

That blasted my budget. That $90 was for food. Gas. Silly, I know. So much for that one night of nice seafood.

We had a lively discussion, at the end of which I promised to make sure my dog wouldn’t eat their big screen.

They took twenty bucks cash as a guarantee. I agreed to a military-style inspection of my room before leaving on Sunday.

Then I schlepped all my food and gear upstairs to the corner suite.

Suite. Right.

The room had a sliver of a desk. A view of a crappy parking lot. Lots of road noise. You have to open the windows because if you don’t, you’re treated to decades of Other People’s Dogs and Body Odors.

The windows stayed open, along with all the road noise and pollution from Highway 101.

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys just died. I’m thinking, so did the California Dream.

I had a packaged salad bowl in my room, watched Netflix and finally tuned out the noise for some fitful sleep.

The next morning my client and I discussed the necessary edits. As it turned out, required edits meant a complete rewrite of five articles, all due by Friday.

WHAT?

I’d lost Wednesday. Now it’s already Thursday morning and I’ve got five articles due by the next day. There was no way I’d be able to spend even an hour taking in the trees.

Well, shit. Okay, I said, and got to work. Windows open to road noise, Mika sleeping on her blankie on the bed. I loaded up on coffee and started to work.

Twenty minutes in, the Internet tanked. Really?

I called Tiffany. Bad news, she said. The local internet provider was doing repairs. Wind storm last week. No promise that service would be restored. Certainly not in the next few days.

So now I’ve invested way too much time and money, and lost a few days, driving down to see sequoias I now have no time to see. I’m working in a shitty motel in a dying town with plenty of ambient noise and pollution, and now the Internet is down.

I have five articles that I now need to rewrite due the next day and there’s no way I can even start on them.

This trip is toast.

It took me a matter of minutes to pack up, clean up and put a wrap on a bad story.

Tiffany, who really appreciated the earring compliment, took care of the refund (stay tuned, Booking.com is likely to fight it). I gave her that twenty for her trouble and she blessed the room to be damage-, if not dog hair-, free.

We lurched back onto 101 heading north.

Then I took Highway 199 to Grant’s Pass. The road winds briefly past entrances to the very redwood groves I had come so far to see.

Mika had her head out the window. She saw more trees than I did. I was driving the speed limit while asshole drivers tried to run me off the road, rushing past one of America’s last great treasures.

Assholes clearly ignorant of how tenuous these trees’ very existence is because of the immense greed that threatens them.

I can sense the slavering of all those lumber companies, so eager to raze the last of these giants. Anything for a fucking profit.

All too soon the redwoods were behind me. There are so few of them any more.

All too soon we are going to lose what’s left either to wildfire or Trump’s troops, so very eager to take the last of what is beautiful and worth protecting.

With cuts to the Forest Service, firefighters and all the rest, we are virtually guaranteed to lose millions more trees. Including what is left of one of the most profoundly rare and beautiful sights on earth:

Photo by Venti Views on Unsplash

This trip was toast.

At least I saw a tree.

I just hope a few will still be there the next time I head south.

Last night as I walked around my house opening doors and windows to let the cool air in, I celebrated the massive firs which surround my home. I have five coastal sequoias planted in the back. This year they threw out some six inches of new growth, so far.

I won’t be here when they grow up. If they grow up. I was nearly in tears, so grateful for these trees. Trees that some damned fool wants to cut because, profit. Ads are everywhere: we want your trees.

Fuck you.

Early next spring, I am going to find a campground near the Stout Grove, pack a tent and take Mika back to see the sequoias. If they survive another summer. Hell, if we survive this summer.

While this trip was toast, and I am now Velcroed to my desk for two days, I am going to back to see a tree…before greed and/or fire reduce the great forests to flatland rubble.

Plant a tree. Protect the trees we have. And make sure your kids know what a forest looks and feels like so that they know they are worth protecting.

Let’s play while we protect what needs to be saved.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Thanks to my readers and subscribers for your attention, your comments and your kind investment of time you don’t get back.