I wish I could report the day we wanted to have, hiking trails among the giant old-growth trees, but one of those unfortunate situations cropped up. I suppose in seven weeks of travel we had to have one systems failure, and this was it. When we turned on the water last night, the kitchen faucet sprang a leak. This wouldn’t be a major occurrence but there is no shut-off for the kitchen faucet, so the only way to stop the leak was to turn off the water pump, and that meant the entire trailer had to go dry.

We patched up the problem as best we could with tape and a bucket, but realistically we had to get it fixed before we could continue to enjoy the trip. Jedediah Smith SP is one of those marvelous places where cell phones do not work, and so our only means of communication with potential repair assistance was via a single payphone across the campground. But at least we could make a few calls in the morning to ascertain our options.

Fortunately, everyone was helpful. The nearest Airstream dealer was 250 miles away in Sacramento, but Airstream said, “We can’t leave you without water in the middle of your trip, so get it fixed wherever you can and send us the bill.” The camp host provided the business card of a good local mobile RV repair service and graciously refunded us our second night’s camping fee.

We drove out to nearby Crescent City and met Jonathan the repairman at the local Wal-Mart, where he arrived with his 5-year-old son Shelby (who was bearing a Star Wars light saber). Emma and Shelby quickly began to play together and we chatted with Jonathan while he diagnosed the problem.

The problem required complete replacement of the Moen faucet, but since Moen offers a lifetime warranty, we were able to call Moen to have a new unit shipped to us. We had to pay an extra $12 for FedEx to get it here before Thanksgiving, though. Jonathan removed the bad faucet, capped off the lines so we could once again pressurize the system, and we were off again – sans kitchen faucet. We’ll meet Jonathan again on Wednesday when the new faucet arrives, to complete the repair.

With all that, we needed to revise our plan. We decided against going back to the State Park, since we will probably need to make some more calls over the next couple of days, so we are now parked at a commercial campground near the harbor.

It lacks privacy, ambience, and trees – a bit of a “Wal-Mart on the water” – but at least the location is central: to our west, a working harbor with barking sea lions; to the south, surfers practicing in the small waves; to the north, fishing boats, and stacks of crab traps; and to the east past the hotel strip, a twisting road through the redwoods, where – as everyone in town has told us – they filmed the Ewok village scenes in one of the Star Wars movies. No wonder Shelby has a light saber. It’s a local industry, sending tourists out to see the Ewok village.