CA’s Half-Marathon: Humboldt County
The nonstop Live Rad run-a-thon continues! Amity and I recently added California to the list of states in which we have completed a Half Marathon. This brings the total to 12 states in which we have run at least a half marathon. In the quest to run one in every state, getting California done was rad! We headed down to Eureka, CA, for a weekend to explore and kick our own butts at the Humboldt Bay Half-Marathon. One of the hardest parts about this one was not the actual race itself, but the training location we had in Brookings, OR. Follow our journey to knocking off the 3rd largest state in the country while navigating ocean fog, hills, and beautiful coastal trails.
Mile: 91,488
Quote of the Blog: "If you can't fly, run; if you can't run, walk; if you can't walk, crawl; but by all means keep moving." - Martin Luther King Jr.
Song of the Blog: “Runnin’ Down a Dream” - Tom Petty & The Heatbreakers
Brookings is not an ideal place to be a distance runner. The landscape is beautiful and great for adventuring! When it comes to running, there are way too many hills! We lived right next to the start of the main trail system through Brookings. Aside from the hills, it did come with some of the most dramatic and breathtaking coastal views we have had on any run we have done. We frequently would add Harris Beach State Park to our running routes. Although it was nice to get some beach running in, it did come with some of the worst hills in town. The main trail was a great fit for when we needed to run anything under 9 miles. Brookings is so small that anything over that would put you in the next town and just add too many hills. For our longer runs, we headed over to Crescent City, CA. This town is 25 minutes south of us and has the perfect 10-12 mile running route. The route starts at the city’s harbor and then works its way past a historical lighthouse and along the rugged shoreline of Pebble Beach. This run became our weekly adventure down to Crescent City. We would typically couple it with going up to swim in the Smith River, along with a pit stop at Swell Coffee for the best lattes in the area and Sea Quake Brewery, which is the best brewery in the area.
Once training was all said and done, we packed up and headed south for the real deal. We haven’t explored this far south into Northern California yet. Just a quick drive through Eureka on our move up to Brookings from Tucson. On the way through, we had seen the entrance to The Trees of Mystery. This is a roadside attraction that goes deep into the Redwood Forest. Up front, it looks super cheesy and a little bit like a tourist trap. The only thing you can see from the parking lot and road is a 50-foot-tall Paul Bunyan statue and a 40-foot-tall statue of Babe the Big Blue Ox. As we were walking in, we realized the Paul Bunyan statue moved and waved at people. It also had someone working somewhere who could see you and would talk to you through a speaker. He would welcome you to the park, answer questions, and make comments about people as they walked by. What a job! Once we got into the park, we realized this was much more than your run-of-the-mill tourist trap. This was legit! It has a little over a mile or so of walking, along with a tree-top walk that took you from ground level, up hundreds of feet into the air along the giant Redwood Trees in the park. This was worth the money alone. As we continued our walk, we eventually got to a Gondola in the park. This was the main attraction and featured in all of their advertising. We are suckers for a good chairlift ride! The gondola was pretty cool! We were able to have a gondola car to ourselves for both the rides up and down. We stopped halfway through the ride as the other cars came to the top and bottom to drop people off and pick up the next group. Once at the top, we were able to see across the canopy of the area and out to the ocean. The coolest thing to see up there was an osprey nest in the top of one of the biggest trees you could see on the horizon. These trees are so amazing with the amount of habitat and biodiversity! Let alone their sheer size! Once we got down from the gondola, we headed back to the visitor’s center. Along the walk, we came across a tree named The Cathedral. This was a circle of 6 gigantic redwoods, circling an ancient and now-gone mother tree. Around 1000 years ago, the mother tree fell and left a trunk for the other trees to grow from, creating a really cool band of gigantic trees wrapping around like organ pipes in a church! Back at the visitor’s center, we found a lot of really cool Native American artifacts in a small museum dedicated to Indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest. It humbles me to walk around and look at these cultures and think about their lives and what this area was like when they were the only ones here. All in all, The Trees of Mystery were pretty damn cool! 100% worth the pit stop! Back in the car, we finished our drive down into Eureka, CA.
Amity is a sucker for old and historical hotels. She booked us a night at the Eureka Inn. When I first saw it, I thought it looked like it was built to be in Glacier National Park in Montana. This hotel was built in the early 1900s and has been maintained very well for an old hotel. Inside, they have portrait-style paintings of famous people who have stayed here. From Winston Churchill to Joe Montana, it appeared to be quite the status symbol in Eureka! After getting checked in, we headed out on a little walk around town before picking up our bibs for the race. Amity found a little bookshop and a new book to read. The downtown area of Eureka has seen its day. It has some really cool Victorian-style houses, but they are all a little run down and beat up. After getting checked into the race, we sampled some chocolate at Dick Taylor’s Craft Chocolate. Who would have thought they would have so many samples in which you could eat as much chocolate as you wanted! No need to take some home, as we just had enough in the store. We finished our night up with some Italian food at Gabriella’s Italian Restaurant. Dinner was delicious, and we got all fueled up for our race in the morning.
The race did not have a super early start, as others typically have. This little bit of extra sleep was greatly appreciated! We were able to get a snack in and casually make our way to the start. The course started and ended at the harbor in Eureka. We worked our way up the side of the coast, past estuaries, river inlets, and some old industrial zones. Amity and I both felt like we ran very strong. I found myself having a couple of small things happen, like my shoe untying, or my hat falling off, or the bathrooms being used. All of these together pushed me back off my goal pace, but I was okay with how things went. I ended up finishing just over 7 minutes off my goal time at 1:47:11. Amity crushed her run! In her mind, she was about to PR, but her timing on her watch was not right, and she ended up 10 seconds short of her PR time at 1:49:21. Now she knows that her PR is well within reach for the next race we do. We both ended up 2nd place in our age divisions, so that was rad! Following the run, we did a little walking around the town, got some coffee, and headed out on our next adventure. It felt good to cross California off our quest to run at least a half-marathon in every state!
Following the run we fueled up at Lost Coast Brewery! I think I might have scared our waitress with how fast I ate my burger! Next on our adventure was up to some old mansions Amity had on her list of things to see. There were two MASSIVE buildings across the street from each other. The bigger of the two is the Carson Mansion, and is now known as the Ingomar Club. This building was built in 1884, and was originally designed to house nearly 100 timber workers. It is a beautiful building & the detail on the trim and design is top notch; even for 2026 standards! Across the street, the original owner of the Carson Mansion built another house for his son. Eventually, this building was renovated and made into a pink and white house, now known as the Pink Lady Mansion. It looked straight out of a Barbie playset. Amity loved it, and I felt like I could smell the bubble gum pink paint. Pretty amazing, the amount of industry and money flowing through Eureka prior to the start of the 1900s.
We didn’t have much on our plans for the drive home outside of one thing; that was to drive through a redwood tree! We had learned about a couple of these trees as kids, and found one along our drive home that was an easy side quest. After paying $50 to go up to the tree, we were able to drive through it as many times as we wanted. We were able to do it twice for fun! At one point, a large SUV came up and tried to drive through it, but the car was too big. We laughed for a bit and then hoped they got their money back. 10-year-old Amity & Billy would have been so proud of us for doing this! It was pretty simple in the big picture of the world and slightly highway robbery for the cost, but overall, it was memorable and we enjoyed ourselves. We wrapped up the rest of the drive back to Brookings. Once we arrived in town, we remembered today was the last day of Pirate Fest down at the harbor. Since we had just moved to this side of town, we had to go down and check it out. We listened to some entertaining Pirate Punk Rock music, had a couple of beers, and enjoyed the people dressed up as Pirates! It was a great way to cap off a hard-fought half-marathon weekend! Next up, we set our sights on Living Rad and running on in Oregon!
