When traveling north through Redwood National and State Parks, you have two choices. You can take the bypass and drive at freeway speeds, or you can slow down to 45 mph and take the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway.
I usually take the parkway. It’s prettier and easier on your vehicle. There’s another reason to take the parkway – the road signs are more entertaining.
Look for crossing Bigfoots.
I can’t tell if this is a surfboard or a hula-hoop.
I figured this driver was giving a one-finger salute until I took a closer look. Groovy, man.
Saturday’s Azalea Festival Parade starts at 11 a.m. on Murray Road. It will travel south on Central Avenue and end at the Mill Creek Marketplace. The parade typically lasts an hour, during which portions of Central Avenue are closed. Residents should make their travel plans accordingly.
If you need to get around town during the event, I recommend doing so on foot or on bicycle. On a bike you can zip all over the place and visit all the venues without getting stuck in one place due to road closures.
Whatever you do, please don’t be a Mr. Bungle and hassle the volunteers about how you’re special the road closure doesn’t apply to you. I’ve witnessed this happen almost every year and it’s downright ugly.
If we all follow the advice in the following film, it should be a lovely weekend.
Several days a week for the last couple of weeks I’ve been pounding the pavement selling ads for our annual Azalea Festival edition.
As usual, we’ll attempt to have the most comprehensive pre-event and post-event coverage anywhere of McKinleyville’s annual town festival. Check out next Tuesday’s paper for pre-event coverage, and make sure you get out and enjoy at least some of the activities next weekend. I’ll post more on this blog next week. The week after, we’ll have coverage of the event in the paper and, if all goes as planned, I hope to have video of the parade on this blog!
In the meantime, I’ll float an idea – next year the McKinleyville Chamber of Commerce should consider changing the event’s name back to Pony Express Days.
Pony Express Days, which began in the 1960s, was changed to Azalea Festival a few years ago. The idea was to re-brand the event and make it more relevant to the local populous.
Seems like everywhere I’ve gone in the last few weeks, people comment about how they dislike the name change. They want the old festival name back.
The comments are unsolicited and come from a broad cross-section of the community. Some folks get downright angry about the name change, but I understand the motivation behind it. There were some years of declining attendance and there was an effort to revitalize the festival. I’m not going to fault the volunteers who put on the event for trying something new.
But there’s clearly a strong sentiment in favor of changing the name back. I think this provides the chamber with an excellent marketing opportunity for 2009. The theme could revolve around celebrating McKinleyville’s heritage. Maybe the grand marshals could be those who have lived here for more than 50 years, or 70 years, or ????
It was a pretty tree, albeit a dead tree. It never had any leaves on it that I ever saw, but it always looked lovely. I took a lot of photos of it, but not nearly enough.
Here’s the tree last August on one of those days when you’re glad to live in paradise. The tree, by the way, was located near the mouth of the Mad River between the Knox Cove subdivision and Murray Road. A lot of people stop at this location to admire the river mouth.
There were a lot of different ways to look at the tree and admire it.
The environment out there is brutal. This photo was taken this January. I thought for sure the river would gobble her up.
I pedaled by the tree last Thursday when it was blazing outside and took this photo.
I took the long way to work today and discovered this sight. I suspect it happened during the high winds yesterday afternoon or evening.
So goes the landscape along the banks of the Mad River. Things are always changing.
