December, 2015

I left Crescent City on December 1. I drove up to Cape Blanco State Park, since I was due there to start my winter camphosting position. The weather was so-so, not hard rain, but sprinkles here and there. The road (Highway 101) turns into a narrow two-lane road north of Crescent City and into Oregon.

Before I left Crescent City, I spent several days walking around the harbor and enjoying the ocean. The weather on those days was wonderful – not too cold, not too warm, sunny and enjoyable.

I saw sea lions, watched a dog playing and watched the waves from the pier.

There were a lot of places to visit, but I only went down to Redwoods National Park south of Crescent City. This is one of the places that I had applied to be a camphost, but I never heard back from them.

So, in Cape Blanco State Park since December 1. Since December 1, there are been a couple of days of no rain, and on days with rain there have been a couple of hours of no rain. In other words, I am growing mushrooms between my toes. Some of the rivers inland are flooding because of the constant rain.

I took some pictures on the day it didn’t rain, but I haven’t been able to repeat the effort, since there hasn’t been non-cloudy and non-rainy days since then.

All those trees surround the campground, so you can kind of see where the camp is.

Leaving the Bay Area

I finally left the Bay Area. I spent the night in Ukiah at the fairgrounds. It was quiet, except for the freeway about ¼ mile from the park. There weren’t a lot of people there, and no wifi at all.

I left the next morning to go to Rio Dell. It was a relatively short trip, made a bit longer by my side trip to the Avenue of the Giants. Dragging a trailer on that relatively narrow, very serpentine road was not fun but the area is gorgeous. The park where I am staying has cable TV but no wifi. Fortunately, the nearest Burger King with wifi is only 10 miles away.

I visited Ferndale – the “Victorian” town. The gingerbread on a lot of the buildings in the downtown area are maintained and painted in gorgeous colors. The bridge over the Eel River is very narrow, but the town itself is lovely.

Then I drove down to the Avenue of the Giants to visit some of the groves. It has been so long since I have been here, everything has changed (except the groves). The Dyerville area has been turned into an overlook and is all grassy and posted with information signs. It was just a dirt filled area when I was here last.

I went to Founders Grove and took the short (1/2 mile easy walk) through the grove. It was peaceful (only saw a couple of other people) and mostly quiet – since the highway is only a mile or so away from the grove, it was possible to hear traffic, but it wasn’t real loud. The air was clean and fresh smelling and I could hear the birds singing in the trees. Didn’t see any, though.

Took a quick picture of the high water mark from 1964. It is about 20 feet high at this point, 90 feet above the river. After the devastation of this flood, a lot of work to protect and redo the watershed has led to such occurances not happening again.

I’m not going to stay here the three weeks I thought I would. Not having wifi here and having to go 10 miles away to get wifi limits the amount of time I can actually keep up with what is happening. So, I’ll be leaving on Tuesday to go to a park that has wifi.