Archive for June, 2006
June 15, 2006 at 9:06 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
At last, the weather has cleared, the temperatures have risen, it has become a gorgeous day, and I’ve taken advantage of it by …. working at my computer all day.
You see, I made the mistake of drinking a glass of Coca-Cola last night at 6 pm and then taking pseudoephedrine (12 hour Sudafed) for the congestion around 9 p.m. The combination kept me up until 1 a.m. Got a lot of work done but sleep was fitful and I popped up again at 6:30 a.m. There wasn’t anything to be done for it except get back to work, but Eleanor and Emma were still sleeping and so I needed to be quiet.
The upshot was that a few of my early-rising neighbors here in the state park were treated to the sight of me wandering around the trailer in my pajamas, gibbering distractedly on the cell phone to people back east. There goes the neighborhood.
Such is the trailer life, sometimes. I’ve wandered around in my pajamas in more parks that I can count. I think all modesty about such things was lost about 18 states back, somewhere in Nebraska last October. I am only glad that the button-down people sitting in their cubicles that I am occasionally chatting with can’t see me.
So although today was a miraculously beautiful day, calm and temperate, I spent most of it inside the Airstream. Eleanor and Emma went out to re-provision the trailer, and of course then it all caught up with me and I got a blissful nap. There’s nothing better than a nice sunny afternoon nap in the Airstream with beautiful views all around.
June 14, 2006 at 7:49 pm · Filed under Places to go
We’ve bought our last tank of gas at $3.47 per gallon, I hope. We’re in Oregon now, and things are cheaper here. Now, if we could only improve the weather….
The drive on Rt 199 from Crescent City CA was as scenic as I expected, at least through the first 35 miles or so. During that time you are in the northernmost part of the Redwood National Park, and the road winds through the big trees and along a river. Then you move seamlessly into National Forest, which is also terrific. It wasn’t as nice as Rt 299 in California, but it was majestic and cool in the fog, and worth the drive.
Once the road crosses into Oregon it is markedly less scenic, since the National Forest ends there and various signs of rural life appear along the roadside. Ten miles later, the tiny tourist town of Cave Junction appears, and the dead-end 17 mile Route 46 that leads up to Oregon Caves National Monument.
Oregon Caves is not a convenient stop, but then, few of the good national parks are. The nearest camping is where we spent the night, at Grayback Campground ($16, no hookups, no dump) in the Siskiyou National Forest. This is 10 miles up Rt 46. Trailers and motorhomes are discouraged from going any further, and taking a 30-foot trailer such as ours up the rest of the road would have been downright crazy.
Grayback is a very nice place, bordered by a wild river, filled with tall pines and mushrooms, damp and primeval and shady, and normally we would love a place like this. But we’ve all had enough of shade lately, and so it was hard to get excited about another day in the gloom and cool. Especially since all of us still have colds.
Still, it presented me with numerous easy photo opps. There’s a particular type of snail that was visible in several places: the Roth Snail. These big guys (about 2″ long) leach calcium from the local marble as they march slowly along. They use the calcium to build colorful red shells of calcite for their homes. We were fascinated to see how they can completely retract their stalks and faces when they are scared.
Seven miles up a very twisty and and narrow road, and a couple thousand feet up, are the Oregon Caves. It’s a good tour (free with the National Parks pass, by the way, otherwise $8.50 per adult). But the real gems of the place are the 1930s Chateau and Chalet buildings. These are real architectural masterpieces, made of huge douglas fir timbers and sided with redwood bark. The Chateau, six stories tall, seems to rise right out of the canyon as if it were planted there, and the river that exits the caves runs right through it.
You can stay in the Chateau overnight. It has more than a dozen hotel rooms, plus an elegant restaurant and a lunchroom. After our 90 minute cave tour, we were hungry and stopped in. (The tour includes 500 stairs, and it’s 42 degrees inside, so we had worked up an appetite.) It’s a great old-fashioned place to eat.
During lunch, Joe the maintenance guy responded to Eleanor’s question about the famous mudslide that nearly destroyed the hotel in 1964. He got into the whole dramatic story, pointing out parts of the Chateau that were damaged. (The building was nearly pushed off its foundation.) It’s a great story.
By this time it was 2 pm and the fog had turned to rain. The temperatures never got above 48, so we sloshed back to the truck and drove back down the National Forest campground to fetch the Airstream.
You’ll notice we aren’t driving the long distances lately. Our longest tow since Reno has been about 100 miles. We don’t need to be in Salem until the 26th, so we are meandering a bit. This saves gas money and it’s also a lot nicer. Why rush if you don’t have to?
So our tow today was only 40 miles or so, to Valley of the Rogue State Park near Grant’s Pass, OR. This is a grassy, manicured park with full hookups near I-5 ($20/night). We’ve selected a quieter site toward the back with just water & electric, and prepaid for three nights. We chose this park because it is convenient to services and along our route to Crater Lake. We need to re-stock a few things, plus I want to give everyone a couple of days to get rid of these darned colds.
I also need to get some work done. We are in the final stages of the Summer magazine issue, and everything goes to the printer on Friday. Once that’s done, we’ll head up to Crater Lake for the weekend and then up to Eugene on Monday.
June 13, 2006 at 10:28 am · Filed under Uncategorized
We are heading off this morning to Oregon Caves National Monument. The route takes us up 101 to Crescent City, where we were stuck last November for a few days when our kitchen faucet began leaking. Then we’ll cut northeast on Rt 199 into the lower end of the Klamath Mountains and then into Oregon. It should be very scenic. Route 199 even has its own website (although it seems to be down today).
We had considered going up 101 into Oregon along the coast, but decided against it for a few reasons. (1) The weather along the coast is going to stay cool (60s) and cloudy for a while. (2) We know from going south on 101 last November that there’s very little Sprint coverage along the coast and that means no Internet, for us. (3) The inland route along 199 brings us to stuff we haven’t seen before, and sets the stage for Crater Lake National Park, which has been on our “to-do” list for a while.
Pronunciation lesson: Being from the northeast US, we say “ORE-uh-gone” but the locals harass us for it. The local pronunciation is “ORE-ee-gun”. Everybody practice — we’ll be there for nearly a month.
I can see from the network coverage maps we won’t have Internet tonight. So this is all the blog entry I can do until we drive out tomorrow and cross I-5 around Grant’s Pass. Stand by. There should be some good pictures coming out of this overnight stop.
June 12, 2006 at 6:35 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The foggy coast near Klamath, CA
Yesterday had patches of sunshine amidst the fog, but today has to be one of the most blah days we’ve had in months. Predictably, the north coast of California is foggy, but today it has been rainy too. Normally that would be no big deal for us, but everyone is feeling some degree of illness today. The cold Emma caught has affected everyone to a certain extent.
A sunny moment from the 4-mile “Seaside Drive”.
Rich C and I went out this morning in the cool rain to scrub the bugs off the trucks and the front of the trailers. Looking at the bugs smashed on the front, the word “carnage” came to mind. Plus the trucks were still coated with green pollen from Lake Almanor. We got the rigs clean but both came away feeling unusually tired. I stayed in the rest of the day catching up on desk work while the rain dripped down.
However, you need a “down day” in this life once in a while. In addition to getting some work done, this has given us a chance to do some trip planning. We’ve worked out several alternate routes through Oregon, which we can choose according to how everyone feels from day to day. If we’re congested and having trouble equalizing, we can take the coastal route. If people are feeling good and the weather is right, we’ll head inland to Crater Lake. Either way, we’ll end up at George M Sutton RV in Eugene in a week or so for some service and a visit.
We are planning to arrive at the International Rally on the 26th. During the rally, we will be reporting on certain events at the rally that blog readers have asked about. This includes the vote on the club’s name change, and any action on the Base Camp debate.
Tomorrow we plan to start heading north again, and hopefully into some nicer weather. The next anticipated stop is Oregon Caves National Monument.
June 11, 2006 at 1:11 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Our Internet connection (via Rich C) was not available most of the time due to a very poor signal, so I couldn’t update the blog until we pulled into this campground about 80 miles north of the state park. We’ve got wi-fi here, although as usual I wouldn’t be able to access it without the range extender in place.
Saturday was a nice day in hobbit-land, among the giant trees. Waking in the morning I had to check the clock to know if it was even daytime, since so little light filtered down through the tree at 7 a.m. it might as well have been night. The photos don’t really do it justice, since the camera automatically compensated for the general dimness. But it was very neat to be waking up in the redwood forest. The temperatures were very steady (in the 60s) and I never saw any bugs at all. That’s a big plus compared to most other forests we’ve camped in.
Emma slept 13 hours (a direct result of having a cold) and woke up saying she wanted to just hang out at the trailer. That’s pretty unusual for her, so we took her seriously and let her have a quiet morning with Mom. Rich C and I headed out to Fortuna to satisfy Rich’s endless craving for Jelly Bellies.
Fortified by Jelly Bellies, we then we hiked an easy 2.5 mile trail in the park, near the town of Pepperwood. There’s more than redwoods to be seen. Ever spotted a banana slug?
This guy was about 7 inches long.
Emma was the only kid at the 3 pm “Junior Ranger” field trip. She used binoculars and a magnifying glass to learn how to look for animal signs. By this time, I was feeling the effects of the cold (yes, I’ve got it too now), and headed back to camp for a big nap.
It was starting to get depressing in the constant darkness. It felt like wintertime. Rich C came by and said, “I miss sunshine,” so we decided we weren’t going to take a third night in the park. But I’m not saying it’s a bad place to go — quite the contrary. It’s a spectacular park and well worth the visit. Just don’t expect any solar power!
Speaking of which, we arrived at Humboldt showing a deficit of 10 amp-hours on the Tri-Metric (we had regained most of the power we used the night before, during the towing, thanks to plentiful sunshine). By the time we left this morning, we were showing a deficit of 95 amp-hours. We used a lot of power and replenished none of it in the dark forest. But I was interested to see that as soon as we pulled out and into the foggy, overcast sky, we started generating 6 amps. That’s not bad for a cloudy day.
Rich C followed us up Rt 101 today, and we made a group lunch stop at the coast. The wind was picking up so Rich ran to get his kite out. Emma helped him.
And now, we are camped in Klamath, only about 50 miles south of the Oregon border. We’ll stay here a night or two to catch up on work and see some local sights, then head into Oregon.
June 10, 2006 at 9:48 am · Filed under Places to go
I have to say that choose the twisting, roller-coaster road that is SR 299 through California was a great decision. (Rich C says it’s a better decision for people with disc brakes, which he doesn’t have — yet.) The road follows the Trinity River past dozens of beautiful campgrounds, river rafting companies, fishing spots, and generally fantastic scenery.
The water is dam-controlled, and the release schedule called for lots of water last week and this, so river rafters were having a great time. We really wanted to stop and catch a rafting trip, but with our reservations at Humboldt in place, we decided to press on. That’s the problem with firm plans. That’s why we generally avoid making reservations!
We swung through Eureka to pick up our mail (a familiar post office, since we got mail there last November, the day before Thanksgiving), and then headed straight down Rt 101, “The Redwood Highway” to the park. It is just as amazing and beautiful as we remembered it.
One thing we forgot, however, was how dark it gets in the redwood forests. Rich C arrived ahead of us and scouted out a nice spot for us. (The campground has very few sites that will comfortably accommodate a 30-foot trailer.) As you can see from the picture above, we won’t be getting much solar power.
Rich C was shocked at how little sunlight reached the ground. Inside the Airstreams, with the tinted windows, it is so dark we need lights all day long. But just a few hundred feet away in a clearing, brilliant bright sunlight is pouring down. It’s strange.
We feel like hobbits in here. It is quiet and primeval in the forest, but also a tiny bit spooky. The scale of the trees and even the stumps dwarf us.
We are pretty sure we are going to reserve a third night (Sunday) so we have plenty of time to hike and explore the area. But that’s going to be the limit. Rich C came over this morning to say, “I like it here, but if we spend too many days here I’m going to get depressed [from the dark]!” which is pretty much what we all were thinking.
Last night we did a short nature trail hike (0.6 miles) and checked out the excellent Visitor Center, and today we have a couple of hikes in mind. Rich C wants to go get a re-supply of his Jelly Bellys (jelly beans) today, and we might even go check out a light house. We’re winging it.
This blog entry comes to your courtesy of Rich C, which spent half an hour last night wandering around the campground with his cell phone to find the best signal. He lucked out and got online, and I’m stealing his wifi signal from 200 feet away, with my Linksys repeater running off an inverter in the Nissan. That means I should be able to update the blog again tomorrow.
June 8, 2006 at 10:33 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Our travels have taken us west down the twisting forest roads from Chester, CA, past the still-snowbound Lassen Volcanic National Park, and descending eventually down to the Sacramento Valley. We would have loved to stop at Lassen, but the roads are not expected to be plowed until July. At last report, there was still 15 feet of snow in one of the parking areas.
Poor Emma has caught a cold, apparently from her days of kid interactions on the inflatable slide in Reno. It showed up yesterday, and caused her plenty of grief on the way down from 4,500 feet to the valley floor, since her ears were slow to equalize. We had to take 20 minute breaks at 2,000 feet and 1,000 feet to let her catch up.
But eventually we arrived in the Sacramento Valley. Instead of spending a couple of nights at Lake Shasta, per the original plan, we’ve to go directly to the pacific coast via scenic and exciting route 299 from Redding. This route brought us past the Whiskeytown-Shasta National Recreation Area, and Whiskeytown Lake. It looks like a fantastic lake for boating and quiet recreation, at least mid-week. It is locked in by mountains, like Lake Almanor, and there are numerous quiet coves to explore.
Our destination was further west, past the tiny mis-named village of Douglas City. We’ve found a nice BLM campground for $10 per night (water, no hookups, no dump, scenic river access). The water is high on the river due to planned water releases ““ part of a program to restore native spawning fish to the river.
All the campsites are deep in a valley and shaded by 200-foot ponderosa pines, so our solar panels are not very useful, and there is no cellular service at the campground to speak of. But for one night it’s a great stopover.
Coming here reminded me once again how glad I am to have upgraded to disc brakes. Every road we drove today except I-5 was either twisty, steep, or both. The descent into the campground is probably an 8% downhill grade. Unlike last year, I didn’t have to work to manage our limited brake capacity. Now, I just tap the brakes and the trailer stops the truck. It’s a huge convenience when driving in these mountainous areas.
Our next stop will be Humboldt Redwoods State Park for the weekend. On Saturday we will probably do some hiking in the damp, cool, redwood forests. Internet access in the state park is iffy, so don’t be surprised if I can’t update the blog until Monday.
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