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.