Valerie in Nature

California Desert Trails was the third and final travel book written by J. Smeaton Chase. After taking on the coast and the mountains, there was still the desert. It seems to also have ostensibly been a guide. He included two chapters and an appendix devoted to the area plants. A second appendix reproduces helpful travel suggestions from USGS. (It may be noted that although this was included, it was after many chapters in which he clearly did not manage to follow quite a few of the suggestions.) A chapter on "desert lore" and geography complete the set of introductory material before finally setting off on the travel. (But there are some smaller travel stories in among these early chapters.) The route he takes on for this book is the circumnavigation of the Colorado Desert. This is the desert area between the Sonoran Desert and the Mojave Desert, not an area of the state of Colorado. He does this in the heat of summer and, I must say, his horse Kaweah is an absolute superh...

There are a couple of projects to look forward to around the Eel River that could be part of an epic piece of unpowered travel. First, the state of California has a Rails-to-Trails project they are calling the Great Redwood Trail. Second, the Wildlands Conservancy has a project to conserve the wild portions of the largely private river canyon in a project they are calling the Eel River Emerald Necklace. Map showing the Great Redwood Trail and Eel River Emerald Necklace projects in southern Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino Counties. The Great Redwood Trail is to follow the Northwestern Pacific Railroad "connecting San Francisco and Humboldt Bays". It is the dark red line running up the map. It includes some hundredish miles along the main Eel River, the most interesting part being between where US-101 leaves the main stem in Humboldt Redwoods State Park to where the two routes rejoin. This section of the tracks was the most expensive railroad line to maintain in its day....