Fifty-four year old salesman has a very close highway encounter witnessed in Del Norte County, California

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I am a fifty four year old man living in San Francisco. I have never had any interest in this subject until this week. An old friend of mine moved to Gold Beach, Oregon, and I was driving up to see him. I had never been on Hwy. 101 before, and became nervous driving on the two lane winding roads. I kept pulling over to let cars in back of me pass. At about 20 miles or so before Crescent City, I pulled off to allow cars to go by, as I went to pull back onto Hwy. 101, I heard the most horrifying scream that I had ever heard. I screamed myself and ducked down on my seat, looking up next to my Honda CRV, was a filthy looking gorilla (best as I can describe) it instantly ran into the tree line a few feet away, and vanished into the dense brush. I saw it for maybe 3 or 4 seconds at a three quarter profile. I would say it was 6.6 ft to 7 ft high, with a wedged head, and it had very dirty matted dark brown dull hair. Strangely enough, seeing the thing didn't frighten me, but the scream...