We were driving three hours south to Fort Bragg from Arcata, California, where we'd spent the night to watch the lineup of the Kinetic Grand Championship races in the morning.
Our next stop was to ride the Skunk Train.
But after we twisted and turned down the 101 South (a.k.a. the Redwood Highway), following the course of the Eel River's South Fork, we turned onto Highway 1 and saw a sign that caught our eye.
So I made a quick U-turn and pulled off onto Drive-Thru Tree Road, where holiday traffic was backed up more than it had been coming out of the Sacramento airport when we'd landed the morning before.
There's only one way in and one way out on the loop road, which is just a 1/4-mile detour from the main thoroughfare.
But it took a lot more time than we thought to finally get to the entrance kiosk—where we paid $15 for driving privileges through what's become known as the "Chandelier Tree."
Although the area looks like one of the surrounding state parks or national forest, this particular grove of trees is privately owned by the Underwood family...
...and it's operated as a memorial to its original owners, Charlie and Hazel Underwood, who bought it in 1922 and founded the roadside stop in 1937 (hence the names "Memorial Grove" and "Underwood Park").
It's a slow-moving slog down the one-lane road to the main attraction—but along the way, you can gaze up at the redwood canopy or admire the many wooden carvings of bears and other woodland creatures that dot the roadside.
Just don't try to back up.
There's a sense of relief when the namesake tree—also known as the "Chandelier Tree"—comes into view. But because everybody wants a photo both in and out of their cars, and there's no method of traffic control, there's still a lot of idling to be done.
The Chandelier Tree could be as much as 2400 years old—and although it's marketed as 315 feet high and 21 feet in diameter, its actual measurements appear to be more like 276 feet high and 16 feet across.
Driving through that auto-sized tunnel was like being transported to a simpler time, of wild exploration and a fascination with the mystery and wonder of the forest.
All sense of time, space, and even sound changes inside there. It's brighter inside the tunnel than out. The carved wood (in some areas, scraped by rear-view mirrors) bears its own resonance. There's a necessary slowness to maneuvering your way through the opening and leaving your car unscathed.
Even looking back, seeing a modern red sportscar poking its nose through the exit end of the tunnel, the feeling remains—of enjoying simple pleasures, and good clean fun, within the enormity of the world.
And then without warning, the wrinkles in the timeline straighten out—and the harsh saturation of modern-day colorized living comes back into view. And it's time to drive the rest of the loop back to the route we were following before we detoured.
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