on the cover / By North Coast Journal Readers

Best Of Humboldt 2010 — Readers’ Picks

Most Awestruck Answer:Rowing on Humboldt Bay. “Where else can one experience the thrill of gliding over glassy water while a peregrine hunts overhead, a jellyfish flounces beneath the surface, and a seal pops its little head up to say hello? The endless sloughs for exploring the nooks and crannies of our watershed, diving pelicans, a bald eagle stoically watching from his perch near the oyster beds … all this from a rowing shell, a kayak, or a little skiff … nirvana is here and it’s salty!”

Least Helpful Answer: It’s A Secret. “If I tell you this, and you publish it I’ll have to deal with all your readers in my favorite spot.”

Best Road

You enter the Wildcat innocently, after a pussycat car-stroll through Vicky-gooey Ferndale, turning at the tall iron-and-wood Capetown-Petrolia sign that resembles an elegant arch into a graveyard. The ’Cat purrs briefly along, then hunches and begins to twist, tossing you deep into the Doug-fir wilds. At the top of the first long hunch you emerge, likely from fog, into wind and bending grass to travel beside “soaring hawks and hovering kestrels,” as one reader noted. You drop down toward the Bear River. Then you’re scrabbling up into the sky again on her skinny, knobbly spine. The world opens. Remote. Spacious. Cape Mendocino, the farthest-west point on the California coast. Dizzying ocean. Empty beaches. Ocean House, lonesome ranch outpost in a sea of grassy ranchland. Then down. Then up. Deeper in. To the Mattole, the mysterious Bear River Valley, the King Range, the Lost Coast and untold adventures.

“It’s insane!” said one reader. “Drive it and you will know,” intoned another.

— Heidi Walters

Most Scenic Answer: GO Road. “‘Best’ is a misleading adjective for this forgotten wilderness highway. What began as a timber harvest expressway from Gasquet to Orleans (hence the “GO”) ended in multiple court battles for Yurok, Karuk and Tolowa religious rights and environmental preservation. Thus, the road was never finished. You can see each end of the road across the headwaters of Blue Creek, the largest tributary of the Klamath below the Trinity River. Climbing from the floodplain of the Klamath at Orleans, the GO road affords views of the Pacific Ocean, Mount Shasta and everything in between, weather permitting. The road cut carries you into the lower southern extent of the Siskiyou Range, one of the oldest and most biologically diverse mountain ranges in the world.”

Silliest Answer: Dolly Varten Way, Arcata Bottoms. “It is used by maybe 10 cars per day and reminds me of, well, Dolly Parton.”

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