We left Yosemite RV Resort on Sunday, April 17th, and traveled north to Auburn, CA. Our son-in-law, Greg Pauly’s parents, Matt and Georgia live in Auburn, and they invited us to visit with them. Matt is 80 and Georgia is 77, so they have been waiting longer than us (ages 64 and 63) to become grandparents.
We traveled up the Central Valley on CA 99, thru Madera, Modesto, Stockton, to Sacramento, then took I-80 to Auburn. As usual, we became very involved in breaking camp and did not eat breakfast. So, we were pretty hungry when we stopped in Madera for gas. Our Canyon Star has a Ford V-10 gasoline engine. We purchased as gas model as the Diesel motorhomes, called Diesel Pushers (DP – Pushers because the engine is in the back) cost about $100,000 more. As we have a gas engine, we can’t go around to the diesel pumps, with the trucks, but must mix with the cars at the gas pumps. It can be very frustrating and requires some keen assessment on whether the gas station configuration is suitable for our thirty-eight foot motorhome. Some stations have RV dedicated gas pumps with extra room, at a distance from the cars, but the Pilot in Madera did not have them. Some gas stations, we don’t even attempt to enter as there is not room for us or no easy exit once we enter.
At the Madera Pilot, we pulled behind an SUV and a pickup truck at the far-right pump. We like the outside pumps as they are easier to maneuver around. There was no one in either vehicle, but the handles were in the cars. So many people are all about themselves, leaving their vehicles at the pump to go in the store and “shop”, with no concern at all for those waiting to get to the pumps. Finally, the drivers of these two cars appeared, got into their vehicles and started to pull away. Just then a tiny little car, like a Chevrolet Spark, squeezed between the pump island on the left and our motorhome, to sneak in and cut in front of us. Walt leaned on the horn, he/she got the message and scurried away. Walt calls these bothersome cars, free to easily maneuver around us, ‘ants’ or gnats’ and threatens to squash them.
We setup camp at Auburn Gold Country RV Park (https://www.auburnrvpark.com/). This used to be a KOA and is a nice little park. They don’t take reservations more than 30 days ahead of your visit, which is pretty unusual. They said that they have lots of longer-term residents in the park, who have right of first refusal to extend their stay, which makes commitments beyond 30 days difficult for them.
That evening, we drove up into the hills above Auburn to Matt & Georgia’s house. They have a nice house on 2.5 acres. They had moved there in the early 2000’s from San Jose (the heart of silicon valley). We had a zoom call with Brenna, Greg, Owen and Greg’s sister, Sara. Owen had been very cranky the day before and they were still a bit frazzled. Overall though, things are getting easier for them.
Georgia had made rack of lamb, potatoes and asparagus, with Strawberry/Rhubarb cobbler (Walt’s favorite) for dessert.
Matt and Georgia met us at our RV park on Monday, April 18th, and we drove north on I-80 to Lake Tahoe. As we climbed into the Sierra Nevada mountains, you could see the railroad line (the Central Pacific from the transcontinental railroad construction days of the late 1860’s and early 1870’s) off to the side. This is the route that Ted Judah, the surveyor for the Central Pacific planned in the early 1860’s. We could see snow sheds, man-made tunnels that keep the railroad line covered so it doesn’t get blocked with snow.
We continued climbing to Donner Pass. We got off I-80 onto CA 20, drove across the rainbow bridge and had a great view of Donner Lake. We stopped at Donner Memorial State Park, on the lake at the visitor center and saw a video about the Donner Party, a wagon train of California bound travelers in 1846, that was delayed on their journey in Utah by taking a “shortcut”, then entered the Sierra Nevada too late to make the crossing. They were stranded at Donner Lake by extremely heavy snows and may have resorted to cannibalism.
We had lunch in Truckee, CA, at the JAX at the Tracks Comfort Food restaurant (https://jaxtruckee.com/) – great sandwiches, then headed east, into Nevada, to circumnavigate Lake Tahoe. The lake is a deep blue and huge. The wind was kicking up high waves. The most beautiful point was Emerald Bay on the south coast. We also drove around Palisades/Olympic Valley, CA, (formerly Squaw Valley) the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics. This is where Georgia and Matt first met.
On the trip back, Google Maps reported that I-80 was closed due to a big rig fire, so we returned on CA 20. What a downhill ride. We sure never plan to try to climb that in the motorhome.
Tuesday, April 19th, was Martha’s birthday, so we gave her the day off. She stayed at the motorhome to relax and do computer work. Georgia stayed home also to can strawberries. Matt and Walt drove to Sacramento, to visit theCalifornia Railroad Museum. We saw the story of the Central Pacific (the western railroad in the transcontinental railroad – 1869). There were lots of railroad locomotives and cars on display. We also walked around Old Town Sacramento. This is about a 6 square block section of town on the Sacramento River waterfront that contains lots of restaurants and other entertainment venues.
We ate dinner with Georgia and Matt. They were telling us about their RV Travels with Adventure Caravans (https://adventurecaravans.com/). They were describing how the tours are organized, with a “Wagon Master” who leads the group and a “Tail Gunner” who rides drag (at the end of the group). The individual rigs must leave each campground by a particular time and have most of the day to get to the next destination. The Wagon Master drives to the next campground to organize the arrivals while the Tail Gunner drives behind all the rigs to offer any assistance required and ensure all participants’ safety. Each tour has a tour book with sights to see each day. At each destination there are organized events and tours. Matt and Georgia became very animated talking about the fun that they had on these tours. They’ve also done much independent travel, having gone to Alaska twice by themselves, after experiencing the route with Adventure Caravans.
Walt, Martha and the puppies left the Auburn Gold Country RV Park on Wednesday, April 20th, to travel to the Benbow KOA Holiday RV Park (https://koa.com/campgrounds/benbow/) near Garberville, CA. We drove south on I-80 to Sacramento, then north on I-5 to Williams, CA. From Williams we drove west on CA 20 through mountains and past Clear Lake. Clear Lake, a natural freshwater lake in Lake County, is the largest natural freshwater lake wholly within California, and at an age of 2.5 million years, it is the oldest lake in North America. We then turned north on US 101. From Clear Lake we drove in rain the rest of the drive. This area gets a lot of rain (60 to 80 inches per year) from Pacific Ocean weather systems that come across the coast mountain ranges. We arrived at Benbow KOA Holiday and enjoyed just relaxing INSIDE the motorhome.
We woke up on Thursday, April 21st, and set up camp. The RV Park is about 20 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, as the crow flies, in the South Fork of the Eel River valley. Just to the north is Humboldt Redwood State Park. We collected some maps and brochures from the RV Park office and determined what activities we might enjoy. Using The Avenue of the Giants map, a scenic highway in northern California, United States, running through Humboldt Redwoods State Park, we decided to drive to Shelter Cove on the Pacific Coast. Only 27 miles away, the drive takes over an hour as we drove on incredible winding roads up and over the King Mountain coast range. Shelter Cove is a small hamlet on the California “Lost Coast” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Coast). Stretching between Shelter Cove to the south and the Mattole River to the north—in both Mendocino and Humboldt counties—the Lost Coast is a wild land of forests, fog, waves, and sand. The steepness and related geotechnical challenges of the coastal mountains made this stretch of coastline too costly for state highway or county road builders to establish routes through the area, leaving it the most undeveloped and remote portion of the California coast. The raw power of the Pacific is evident at Shelter Cove. We walked down to the tidal pools, observed rocks full of sea lions and saw the large waves coming in. The Cape Mendocino Lighthouse (originally located 30 miles north of Shelter Bay) was constructed in 1868 and warned ships of the hazardous waters. The lighthouse was dismantled, refurbished and rebuilt at Shelter Cove in the 1990’s. We returned to the motorhome and decided to have a nice steak dinner at the Redwood Palace in Miranda, CA, (https://redwoodpalacemiranda.com/). Martha had the famous Redwood Palace Ribeye and Walt had the Filet special. Yum!
We took the dogs and drove north on US 101 on Friday, April 22nd, to Phillipsville, CA, and the Avenue of the Giants ((https://avenueofthegiants.net/). The 32-mile Avenue of the Giants parallels Highway 101 and winds its way through Humboldt Redwoods State Park. This road was originally built as a stagecoach and wagon road in the 1880s and became US 101, the Redwood Highway, before the new highway was built in the 1950’s. We followed an auto tour (http://aveofthegiants.com/auto-tour/), through eight stops. We walked in the Franklin K. Lane Grove (named after President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of the Interior), the Bolling Grove (named after Colonel Raynal Bolling, the first higher ranking US officer killed in World War I), ate lunch at the Humboldt State Park visitor center and walked the Founder’s Loop near the site of the former village of Dyersville, CA, destroyed by flooding in 1955.
The coastal redwoods, Sequoia sempervirens, are a relative of the Giant Sequoias of the Sierra Nevada. The coastal redwoods are the tallest trees on earth, growing over 300 feet tall. They also make some of the best lumber in the world, produce straight strong board that are decay and insect resistant. They were almost logged out, but in 1918, the Save the Redwoods League (https://www.savetheredwoods.org/) was founded after road trip, by three prominent conservationists, John C. Merriam, Madison Grant and Fairfield Osborn, who drove north on California’s newly constructed Redwood Highway to investigate the status of the tallest trees on Earth. What they found was both inspiring and appalling. The beauty and tranquility of the primeval redwood forest filled them with awe, but the accelerating rate of its destruction horrified them. Today, only 5 percent of the original old-growth coast redwood forest remains, along a 450-mile coastal strip from Monterrey in the south to the Oregon border in the north, with the most extensive groves in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, Redwood National and State Parks and Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The Avenue of the Giants parallels the Eel River which is prone to flooding. There are markers along the route showing the high-water mark during the 1964 flooding, caused by three storms between Dec. 19 and Jan. 31. The volume of water at that time exceeded the normal flow of the Mississippi and Amazon River’s combined.
On Saturday, April 23rd, we relaxed at the motorhome and worked on our blog entries. We had run into technical issues with posting the pictures and some general fatigue with the written entries, resulting in the website stagnating at Yellowstone National Park (August of last year) and the blog writing at Monument Valley (September of last year).
We did laundry early on Sunday, April 24th, then took the Jeep, and the puppies, to the Mattole Road in Humboldt Redwood State Park. This road turns west from the Avenue of the Giants through the Rockefeller Grove, through the hamlet of Honeydew, over the coast range and down to the Pacific Ocean. The Rockefeller Grove (http://www.redwoodhikes.com/Humboldt/Rockefeller.html) was the result of a collaboration between the Save the Redwoods League and oil baron John D. Rockefeller. After a visit to the area, Rockefeller contributed $1 million dollars, matched by the state of California, to purchase over 9000 acres from the Pacific Lumber Company, in 1931. The number and size of the trees gives this forest a biomass of seven times a tropical rain forest. The road climbed with many switchbacks, then descended, down the other side of the mountain into Honeydew and continued north through north through the hamlet of Petrolia. After Petrolia, the road descended down to the Pacific Ocean. It was a very panoramic sight. We drove along the coast for several miles to Cape Mendocino. This is the most western tip of land in the continental United States. The road then climbed over the coast range and descended into Ferndale, a town with lots of Victorian era homes (the Jim Carrey movie The Majestic was filmed here). We drove 150 miles in all, most very curvy. Quite a day of adventure.
We left the Benbow KOA on Monday, April 25th, to travel to Kamp Klamath (www.kampklamath.com/) in Klamath, California. We drove north on US 101 to Eureka, CA, where we stopped at the Wal-Mart for groceries. We continued through the Redwoods National and State Parks to the exit just south of the Klamath River Bridge. We passed Klamath River RV Park, right on the Klamath River, and a mile later arrived at Kamp Klamath. The river view at Klamath River RV Park is very nice and we had considered staying there. However, we chose Kamp Klamath instead. Just shows you that making these decisions from internet images only is difficult. Kamp Klamath nice RV Park set in a grove of Alder trees, but it doesn’t have the river view.
We setup camp and relaxed for the evening. The Alder is a deciduous tree, but female flowers are woody and do not disintegrate at maturity, opening to release the seeds in a similar manner to many conifer cones. Seeing what looks like a pine cone on deciduous trees is a bit puzzling. When the alder is cut the wood has a very distinct orange color. It also makes very powerful wands for advanced witches and wizards, such as Albus Dumbledore.
We spent Tuesday, April 26th, relaxing at camp and working on our blog. We are caught up through October of last year and our travels this year, with only our time in Tucson to go.
We drove south to the Newton B. Drury Scenic Drive in Redwoods National and State Parks on Wednesday, April 27th. Newton B. Drury was a founding member of the Save the Redwoods League, and executive secretary in charge of publicity and fund raising, a position he held for twenty years. He eventually became the Director of the National Park Service in 1940.
Redwoods National and State Parks is a complex of one national park and three state parks (Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park) cooperatively managed, located along the coast of northern California. This is an unusual arrangement that had us puzzled. The Newton B. Drury Scenic Drive is a shorter version of the Avenue of the Giants traveling through ancient redwoods grove in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. We stopped and ate a picnic lunch at the Visitor center and marveled at the Roosevelt Elk herds in the meadows. Also known as the Olympic elk and Roosevelt’s wapiti, it is the largest of the surviving subspecies of elk (Cervus canadensis) in North America by body mass. We drove out the Davison Road to the Gold Bluff Beach Campground. This was another windy very very narrow road through redwood groves. Along the beach, the road was dirt and wet. The Jeep became extremely dirty on this trip.
We drove the Coastal Drive loop on Thursday, April 28th, to overlooks of the Pacific Ocean. The coast is rocky and beautiful. There were sea lions on the rocks just off the shore. At the mouth of the Klamath River, we could see lots of sea lions and harbor seals. We also walked to two “farmhouses” on the bluffs above the Pacific, that were really radar installations looking for Japanese submarines during World War II. We then drove north on US 101 to Crescent City, CA. This is the most northern city of any size in California. We mailed a package of gifts to Owen in Los Angeles and had dinner at the Chart Room restaurant on the pier (https://www.ccchartroom.com/). We had a great view of several docks full of sea lions and of the Battery Point Lighthouse. We wanted to wash the jeep, but couldn’t find a do it yourself carwash.
We left Klamath, and California, on Friday, April 29th, traveling to Grant’s Pass, Oregon. We bought our last “California Gas” in Klamath at the Pey-Mey station (Yorak Indian reservation) for $5.55. We bought 20 gallons, enough to get us to Oregon and cheaper gas. We traveled again through Crescent City and took US 199 through Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park (https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=413) and followed the Smith River upstream. They filmed Stars Wars – The Return of the Jedi in Jedediah Smith. It was the setting for the planet Endor, home of the Ewoks. We looked very carefully as we drove, but didn’t see any Ewoks. They must have been hiding. The Smith River looked very clear and clean and probably cold (we didn’t test it).
The drive was mostly two lane and very narrow and winding. Quite a challenge in the motorhome. We constantly had to pull over on turnouts to allow smaller faster vehicles to pass. We arrived in Grant’s Pass and promptly bought $300 in gas ($4.61/gallon), filling both the motorhome and the Jeep. We settled in at the Riverpark RV Resort (http://www.riverparkrvresort.com/). It is a nice little park right on the banks of the Rogue River. The Rogue has its origin in Crater Lake National Park and flows west, reaching the Pacific Ocean at Gold Beach, Oregon.