This is amazing/vexing.
Journal homie Jonathan Webster put together this graphic (with inspiration from John Chernoff) illustrating the difficulties of traveling north from behind the Redwood Curtain without a car. Unless you’ve got a good amount of cash, you’re looking at 20 hours of travel minimum. You could watch every episode of Portlandia twice in that time. Commence frustration.
This article appears in Humboldt Outside.
This is why I refer to “transportation-starved” Humboldt in my blog. Nice job, really.
Great illustration of a problem that the free market just can’t solve. This hasn’t changed in a long time. The main reason they built HSU (then Humboldt Normal School) a hundred years ago was because it was incredibly impractical to get to/from Humboldt County. Unless you have a car, it’s still a PITA.
It hasn’t always been this bad. When I moved here 12 years ago there were still Horizon Air Lines flights to and from Portland via Redding, two Greyhound buses via Redding and two Greyhound routes up 101 to Newport that then cut over to Portland. The former two bus routes were a bit quicker, the slower was 13 hours one way and often heart-stoppingly beautiful rides, day or night. Drivers were careful and courteous, riders thoughtful of others, and most buses were filled for at least part of the way up or back but I never saw anyone get turned away.
It is perhaps to our advantage that Horizon no longer flies out of our airport: the last year it did so its small planes were increasingly dilapidated and some of its pilots aspiring barnstormers. Greyhounds going north disappeared more gradually: routes were cancelled one by one.
I recently took the Greyhound down to Martinez and the Amtrak train to Portland and back; if you have the time, i would heartily recommend the journey. But do bring a pillow. And a blanket. And a good book.