Eureka, CA - Touring the Town

“…if I build it poorly, they would say that I was a damned miser; if I build it expensively, they will say I'm a show off; guess I'll just build it to suit myself.”

                                                                                William Carson - about his home

We spent out first day in Eureka touring the town itself. We’ve been told to see the Carson Mansion and the Pink Lady across the street. The Carson Mansion was built for William Carson who left Canada for San Francisco during the gold rush in 1849. Here working in the gold industry, he and some friends moved north to actually join the gold rush and landed in the Eureka area. But, when gold was difficult to find, he found lumber and with a friend began to fell trees for the lumber mills growing in the area. He continued and went into the lumber business. As you can see from this house, he did quite well in milling. He had expanded from one mill to many, from Eureka to southern California and had also invested in schooners used to transport his lumber.

He wanted a home to showcase wood and he certainly got it. It cost $80,000 took 2 years to build and employed 100 of his men to build it during a slowdown in the lumber industry. It sure does show how wood can be used. It is 16,200 sq. ft with 3 floors and a tower. He then built a home across the street as a wedding gift for his son and new wife. This one is called the Pink Lady - for obvious reasons.

We’d love to tour the home but the Carson Mansion was bought by a private club in 1950 when the family sold all their holdings in Eureka.

We walked along the waterfront and, just like Sacramento and hundreds of towns throughout America, Eureka has redeveloped the water front to be the highlight of the town, to be the draw, to be the amenity. Here you can find a multitude of shops selling everything from herb stores to furniture to food to gifts.

But, this is a working waterfront, after all and we found the lobster traps to prove this. They were lining the waterfront.

The town is in the process of making the waterfront into a tourist area and has added several art pieces.

And what is a walk along the waterfront without a picture of the water?

Eureka, CA - Movin' On

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.”

                                                        --Bertrand Russell, British philosopher

We’re moving on up to Eureka today. We had stayed in Sacramento for a week longer than we had originally scheduled and we used this time to work on the RV and to wait for better weather for heading up north. Well, today it is time to move and it is raining. We had seen the forecast but, as Gary said, we’d better get used to the rain, we’re heading on up to Oregon. And, so, we’re off.

We’re taking all side roads and not an interstate among them. We need to get over to the coast and that means going over what is called the coast range. But we took the roads that followed the rivers and weaved our way through. It had rained for several days and here you can see the snow covering the higher hills south of our drive. You can also see that low rain cloud. I think it followed us the whole drive.

The road curved and wound its way among not only the hills but the trees along the road.

We found a neat small stream that only appears after rains.

We drove through Richardson's Grove where 101, which is usually a 4-land divided highway narrows and narrows some more to 2 skinny lanes through so beautiful redwood trees. You can even see some chunks out of the trees about rear-view mirror height where people have had a close encounter of the tree kind. They got a little too up-close and personal with a redwood. And, believe you me, the redwood is going to win any battles, though not without some scars. 

And, we also found this sign telling us about the park and the 32-mi Avenue of the Giants which takes you right through some magnificent stands of redwoods in the park. We will take that drive i a few days. Note that someone has written some corrections on the map since it says you are at the top of the map driving south when you are really at the bottom of the map driving north. The comment is: ‘of all the places that a mistake could have been make, this is probably the worst. See below for correction.’

The trees were spectacular and the drive was neat too. Maybe I would have enjoyed it a bit better had it not been raining. But, that added another dimension.

We did miss some of the businesses along the way but we’re thinking there might be a lot more.