Trees of Mystery

Our favorite motel along the trip was Motel Trees in Klamath, CA. The motel defines the phrase
"in the middle of nowhere" as it is tucked in the middle of endless, silent woods. It is part of a kooky tourist-oriented complex called "Trees of Mystery" that includes a restaurant (closed for the season) and a whole complex of wacky roadside attractions. I have a thing for kitchy tourist traps, so I was very excited to go. Trees of Mystery had the perfect combination of kookyness and actual educational/entertainment value and we loved spending Thanksgiving morning there.


Our motel was a classic roadside number, but updated with this cool giant photo wallpaper mural and a few other hip touches.

Trees of Mystery is visible from the road mainly because of the HUGE Paul Bunyan statue out front, complete with Babe the blue Ox.


After exploring the massive, endless gift shop we got our tickets (in the form of a hand stamp Monroe was pretty thrilled about) for the main attraction: the ski gondola that takes you into the canopy of the redwood forest!
You must take the Trees of Mystery trail to get to the gondola. It is marked with signs like this and one proclaiming "these are the trees you have seen in Ripley's Believe it or Not!"

Our first stop was the Family Tree, which is a great example of one of the unique features of the redwoods' growth pattern: reiteration. Some of the largest trees have horizontal branches that are so thick and strong, new vertical trunks grow from them. These secondary trunks would be huge trees on their own, and together they form an entire forest canopy from one trunk. In the second photo below, you can probably make out some of these secondary trunks in the "family tree."



Here's me with a pretty big tree.

Finally, we reached the gondola and got on board. It was a beautiful ride up through the top of the trees to an observation platform in the mountains, where we used binoculars to look out at waves crashing on the far away shore on one side and up into bigger hills of great trees the other way.


This exhibit on the way out of Trees of Mystery shows the age rings in a felled trunk, dating the tree back to the crusades and marking (from left to right) the creation of the Magna Carta, the voyages of Columbus, the settlement of the Pilgrims, and the declaration of Independence. That, my friend, is an old tree.

Leaving Trees of Mystery, we were engulfed in fog as thick as skim milk. The bridge in the right part of this photo was very near, not much farther than that little bird.
Next, we headed for our cabin in the northern forest where we'd meet up with Adam (Eben's brother) and Kathy (his girlfriend.) More on that later!