Eleanor asked me if I would lose my interest in the big trees if we lived here. I don’t think I would. They keep surprising me, and I keep wanting to explore every little redwood grove we see. And there are dozens of groves, many of them marked with little signs and tiny pull-outs so you can hike among them.

I got up early again to do some business over at the Ray Jen cafe, got the oil changed in the Nissan. Because we are towing a lot, I am trying to stick to a schedule of 3,000 mile oil changes. In the afternoon, we basically hung out waiting for Jonathan and Shelby to show up with our new faucet.

They showed up around 2 pm and Jonathan made quick work of the faucet while Emma and Shelby played a game. Now our water problem is entirely solved.

It was a dash from there to Eureka, 90 miles south. We had just enough time to make some quick stops, one at the Elk Prairie Campground Visitors Center (and yes, there are really a LOT of big elk roaming around there — wish I’d had a telephoto lens), and another stop at the Redwood National Park headquarters to get our national parks pass stamped.

I was utterly amazed when we pulled into the Eureka post office at 4:54 pm, the day before Thanksgiving, and managed to pick up our forwarded mail in less than 4 minutes. We had expect we’d miss the post office and have to camp in Eureka for a few days. With this bonus, we decided to press on for another hour and get a little further south because we need to be in Suisun City (300 miles from here) on Saturday.

It’s a drag when we have to be on a schedule. I would have liked to explore the old downtown of Eureka and see the famous Victorian houses. But the compensation is that we spent another night camping among the redwoods, just off the famous “Avenue of the Giants” that parallels Rt 101 in Humboldt County.