Ever read the Tom Robbins novel, Just Another Roadside Attraction?  I finally worked out that his premise was better developed by Sinclair Lewis in Babbit where local chamber of commerce validation of “commercial tourist attractions,” usually means, according to this visitor in time, don’t go there unless you absolutely had a need to walk around wearing a sandwich board style tee-shirt, advertising for free, a plastic Disneyland ride through a manufactured natural wonder.

Fortunately just up the road from commercial fisherman marina slips being taken over by fancy private yachts, their also is an opportunity to experience for real the lost culture of another tougher than nails, self sufficient, Westerner, we all used to respect.  A Northwest big tree lumberjack. Right! That was how Clark Gable made his living before becoming a movie star.

Unfortunately the walls of the Samoa Bunkhouse dining hall are covered with sepia toned panoramic pictures of felling crews and an ox team standing on a broad table of a —redwood log. This impromptu, diner funded, museum also had some artifacts I have yet to see on Antiques Road Show.

After a breakfast designed for real working men instead of a filmmaker who can A-B an edit point without touching a Movieola crank, I asked the cashier if she knew some of the jargon from ‘misery whip’ days. At least she understood why some axes came with a double bit —with different bevels. Her response was more knowledgeable than a display in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park Visitor Center scientifically stating it was, something as, “well when a woodchopper chops wood this design feature enabled the woodchopper to chop wood, twice as long.”

Oh, I see. Perhaps this would be a really good place to slip into a visit to the land of “tree huggers” that will maime loggers and murder mill workers to make their point on national news.  Explaining the difference between a ‘hugger’, and the money ‘tree mugger’, ignores the simple fact that some “wild frontier mentality crackpots” actually love the smell of a fir tree, or a natural pine scent, over that of vase full of cut flowers.

And what about Northwest photographers who grew up exploring forests, because they were there? How does it happen that so many heritage sites have been protected by encasing them inside an un-photogenic chain link fence? My favorite complaint of destroying something because it needed “Great White Father” protection, are Native American “bathing pits?” on top of a hard to reach mountain, where a new “no horses allowed” expensive, ‘turnpike trail’ led to metallic signs on steel fence posts driven into the heart of each place of “pagan un-Christian,” worship to Creator — that promised huge fines for destroying an archeological site.

Better stop right there —for now. What I have for years been trying to explain to hot-head radicals who advocate that killing all deciduous trees on plant earth by using their leaves for toilet paper, instead of the regeneration of farming trees for that special purpose, that true conservationists actually support much of their agenda. Double that for us recreationalists who selfishly want to camp under a canopy of threes.

Fact is I have been a financial supporter of “Save the Redwoods.” As only four percent of an absolutely unique forest of Costal Redwoods survive, and as none of us have the time to wait around 2,000 years for seedling to grow to the point where man (if he still exists) would be able to walk the talk about connectivity— duh, we need to protect these giants!

Redwoods are easy to identify trees (without resorting to Latin names) and perhaps should also be protected outside the artificial boundaries of the Redwood National Park. Did you know that the species, “big money-big house” dead tree paper traders, are paying up to $14 per board foot for private lands grown redwood lumber? Doing the math this would put a redwood deck (the nature inspired color needed to match carved elephant ivory handles of an absolutely exquisite barbecue tool set) somewhere in the $8,000 to $16,000 range when non-nomadic dwellers compete in a contest of conspicuous consumption.
 
I would praise the National Park Service, for their service, except for the public takeover of non-redwoods lands to build a headquarters only reachable by what is called locally the “new highway.” When CalTrans built this public right of way through, they bladed out a wide mile long parking area where RVers could spend a night listening to breakers pounding the shore without a fear of getting stuck in soft sand. Unfortunately this campsite —wags called Social Security Beach— was free. Some office bound park ranger in the other Washington, who apparently felt people should not park in parks, for free, decreed the sand spit so vital to their mission of protection of historic birthrights, they started a “don’t tell why,” phase out of legal overnight RV camping.

Self-contained RV visitors did not mind paying for the privilege of enjoying the unprotected view of the surf as portable bathrooms encouraged day use visitors to be a little more courteous when visiting our “home for the night.”  Even retired visitors went along peacefully —sort of— with the notion Golden Age Passport camping fee discounts did not apply as the sand spit (formed by wind and wave action) somehow needed extra special protection. 

Now that RV use by the elderly, handicapped by trying to live simply off of a Social Security check, is illegal, those who need early morning visitor center access to win the daily first-come lottery of a very limited number of U.S. National Park day-passes to hike into the really special area shown in our video, will have to drive many extra gas wasting miles from a State of California Park, where a tourist can actually camp under a redwood canopy.