Eureka is the biggest town on California's north coast, a place of about twenty-seven thousand people on the shores of Humboldt Bay, and it is a very good place to stop and refuel before or after the Avenue of the Giants. The town grew rich on redwood in the late nineteenth century, when lumber barons built ornate houses and shipped their cargoes down the coast to San Francisco. The finest of them is the Carson Mansion, a gabled, towered Victorian pile that stands on a corner near the water and is probably the most photographed private house in California.
Old Town, near the waterfront, has been restored, and its brick buildings now hold bookshops, galleries and restaurants. Humboldt Bay supplies oysters that are among the best on the West Coast, and you will find them on many a menu. The bay is also an important stop for migrating shorebirds, and the marshes at the northern end, in Arcata, are a bird-watcher's playground. Fog is a constant companion, rolling in off the Pacific and softening the light, and summers here are cool and grey while the inland valleys bake.
Highway 101 passes through Eureka as a busy four-lane road, so the riding here is not the draw. The pleasure begins south of town, where the highway climbs into redwood forest and the old Avenue of the Giants runs parallel to it, a thirty-one-mile road through the biggest stand of old-growth redwoods left in the world. The trees are so tall that the light turns green and the temperature drops, and the road winds through them in gentle bends. To the north, Highway 101 reaches Trinidad and Patrick's Point, with sea stacks and cliffs to match anything on the Oregon coast.
Practicalities are easy. Eureka has multiple fuel stops, supermarkets, motels and restaurants, and the nearest town of any size, Arcata, lies a short way north. Myrtletown and Bayview are small suburbs with little else but houses. Be careful of wet roads in the redwoods, where shade keeps the pavement damp long after the rain has stopped and needles and branches fall on the road.