Scribble World Travel Blog

Redwoods National Park

Of all the places to get locked out of our van, it happened to us in the middle of the 131,983 acres that make up the Redwoods National Park! With the nearest lockout service hours away, things were not looking good. I had only gone to put on my coat (The temps average just 40-60 degrees year round in Redwoods National Park) when the car door suddenly swung shut-with both sets of keys sitting inside…Oops…

Resisting the urge to panic, Chris walked around the van searching for a way in while I went into the visitor center to find out what our prospects were. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any tools and with the bad economy, the nearest business that would’ve been able to help had been forced to close.

The ladies who worked in the visitor center were very nice, there just wasn’t a whole lot they could do-she wrote down a couple phone numbers to service stations, which posed another dilemma-everything was long distance meaning we would need change to use the public payphone.

Though I’m sure borrowing some change would have been the least of our problems, I wasn’t too eager for the estimate either which probably would have been in the hundreds. Stalling, I decided to go check on Chris first.

So besides kick yourself in the bum, what do you do when you get locked out of your vehicle in the wilderness and you don’t have AAA or a hidden spare key? In our case, we got lucky.

The one other family at the visitor center, (who were at the Redwoods to camp) followed me out to our van curious to see what our situation was. The Dad never goes anywhere without his handy leatherman multi-tool pocket knife and asked if he could tinker with the window. “By all means, what have we got to lose?”

It took quite a while, but using the leatherman he skillfully managed to get the spring contraption off one of our very back windows, the one that only opens an inch. Hopefully there aren’t any car thieves present, but having watched the delicate and time consuming procedure-I’m sure there are much easier ways to break into a car- at least for those unburdened with the expense and inconveniene of having to replace the window afterwards.

Once the window was loosened, it opened another couple inches and although still too small to fit a child through, Chris had found a long skinny stick measuring about 8 feet which snugly reached all the way to the front seat to unlock the door. It was like winning the lottery in a way and probably saved our vacation. I wanted to give them some money for their help and patience, but they point blank refused all offerings and said we should watch the movie, “Pay It Forward,” and help someone else in need someday. How cool is that?

Happy vacationers once again (with keys safe in hand) we set out to explore some of the most massive trees on Earth!