Eureka moments while travelling

Eureka, Eureka!

[I’ve found it]

Attributed, probably incorrectly, to Archimedes

However much you plan a trip there will be some moments and places you didn’t expect. Places that weren’t on your itinerary but catch your eye, or simply provide a convenient pitstop. Places that delight you all the more because you expected little of them. Such serendipity is one of the joys of travelling.

On our recent California trip, Eureka was such a place. We stopped here mainly to break one of the longer driving days, but also to provide a bit of variety in a trip that was predominantly about the landscapes of California and in my near-constant pursuit of good coffee! And what an appropriate name this is for a city that delivered several lovely surprises. Let me take you on a short Monday Walk around town.

Fort Humboldt

Before driving right into town we stopped on the outskirts at Fort Humboldt State Park. This was the site of an historic military fort, overlooking Humboldt Bay, which was established here in 1853. It is most famous for being for a short period home to a young Captain Ulysses S. Grant.

Only one of the original buildings remains intact, the hospital, but a few others have been reconstructed, most notably the Surgeon’s Quarters. I was disappointed not to be able to go inside this (I later read that it is not currently open to the public but there are plans to establish it as a period house museum in due course). However, we enjoyed following the short trail around the fort. This gives a very honest account of the impact of colonialisation in what were (and still are) the ancestral lands of the native Wiyot people. The state park website explains:

Sharing only the military piece of the Fort Humboldt history would not come close to capturing all that this place, and this historical period represents. This would lead to an unbalanced perspective of Fort Humboldt’s role in this area’s development. The inclusion of California Native Americans’ lived experiences in this story acknowledges how this historic site represents a painful reminder of that history to their descendants. By sharing the complete story of Fort Humboldt, it is our hope that this will provide healing support to the ongoing cultural revitalization being undertaken by many of the area’s Indigenous people and their communities.

The trail also led us past an open-air display of historic 19th-mid 20th century logging equipment, showing how this evolved from early steam donkeys to more powerful locomotives which enabled the transport of increasingly large loads of timber and precipitated the deforestation of significant areas of land in this region.

Street art

After visiting Fort Humboldt we followed signs to the Old Town which my guidebook indicated would be a good bet for a coffee stop. What the book didn’t mention however was that Eureka’s Old Town is a fantastic place to find street art, with some impressive large murals. We were distracted in our search for coffee by my desire to find and photograph some of the best, so wandered around several streets in the vicinity of where we had parked. I think Natalie will enjoy seeing what we found for her Photographing Public Art challenge.

The waterfront

As I mentioned, we had quite a long drive ahead of us on this particular day, but we couldn’t turn away from the coast (which we wouldn’t see again on this trip) without a stroll along Eureka’s waterfront. There were lovely views of a marina and offshore islands, and an interesting display of banners on the lampposts honouring locals who had served in the military and coastguard services. The bonus was the sight of a seal swimming some distance away, just close enough to be captured with my zoom lens!

And that coffee!

The guidebook was right about the coffee! There are several independent coffee shops here and we loved the one we chose, Old Town Coffee and Chocolates, just a block from the waterfront. In addition to decent coffee, we enjoyed the quirky décor here, just what we needed to set us up for the drive inland to our next stop, Weaverville. But that must wait until my next Monday Walk …

I visited Eureka in September 2024