h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for a very good entry on Humboldt. As a 22-year Northern and Central California resident I want to mention a couple more things to help distinguish Humboldt's near-neaighbors from the folks further south.

Sequoia sempervirons ("always living") also do very well in Santa Cruz County, south of San Francisco. The area was gone over pretty well by loggers in the late 19th and early 20th century, so there is not a lot of old-growth redwood forest there, but there is some left (notable at Roaring Camp, which takes visitors on kitshcy tours of their small patch of ancient forest behind 90-100 year old steam locomotives). In the short time since the logging, a very healthy generation of second-growth redwood has filled in, so I would say that they are thriving there, too, and doing very, very well down in Big Sur, too. (In fact, I think the tallest redwood still standing might now be in Santa Cruz, since the 395-footer fell in Humboldt several years ago.)

(Interestingly enough, Santa Cruz, like Humboldt, was once famous for it's bohemian, pot-smoking culture. This has vanished to some extent with the encroaching culture of Silicon Valley and skyrocketing rents, but remnants are still very present on some streets and in the hills above -- but maybe I'll just post an entry for Santa Cruz.)

There are also other large stretches of eastern and northern California which have not yet been ravaged by sprawl. The Sierra Nevada Range still stands very proud, and houses a great many people who want nothing to do with the California that most of the world sees.

Thanks again for the entry. I don't mean to nitpick about generalizations of California; somehow the closer somebody gets to the heart of it, the more I want to prod them on.