Trip Journal: Day 5 and day 6-Camping in the Redwoods!

Wednesday, September 14th

Etna's RV park with LDS meetinghouse in the background

We got a good night's sleep  in our little grassy camp in the RV park in Etna California and woke to find the tent wet with dew outside and moist from our breath inside. We had set the tent up directly on the grass so that when we packed it up it was still pretty wet on the bottom, but much of the upper part of it had dried as the sun rose higher over the mountains and the shadows retreated from it. It was just as well we didn't put it on tarps though because then they would have been wet when we put them down at the next camp and would have picked up all kinds of dirt and needles.

This little playground stood between the bathrooms on the right and the grassy, treed tenting area to the left. The background give some idea of the lovely setting that was Etna

The RV spots we weren't allowed to stay in...

We both got good showers, which was welcome after skipping showering the day before at the state park camp which didn't have showers. Wayne claimed to be prepared to go days without, he is a scouter, but I told him I have 'girl hair' and would not do so well with a string of days unshowered. We had discussed options for me to wash my hair in a basin in camp if necessary, but I was glad that it didn't come to that. I am much more game about camping than my sisters in law, but I am not excited about the boy scout style of no bathing and wearing the same underwear all week!

From Etna to Humboldt State Park via routes 3 and 36 is 200 miles, but the road is winding and the speed limit moderate, so it was a good day's drive for us. But what a country to drive through! Forests and streams again as we travelled through the Trinity Alps and the Shasta Trinity National Forest. Rocky peaks jutted up and the faces of the road cuts were often made up of a glistening shiny greenish rock that I wished I could identify.  We often passed National Forest campgrounds and recreation areas, but many of them were already closed for the season. The lake we passed was quite low, so we guessed that the drought was not fully relieved just from having one year of more abundant rains.

When it was mid-day and we were ready for lunch we pulled in at a quiet forested campground that was not closed and stopped at the handicapped site near the entrance to spread out our lunch. Once again we made a picnic for the persistent yellow jackets to buy ourselves some peace to eat our own lunch. It was a lovely spot, and so quiet and peaceful. We never did see anyone at all coming in or going out while we were there. The road we travelled had some traffic on it but not a lot, so often we were driving with no other cars in sight of us.

We didn't stop other than the lunch stop and eventually we reached highway 101 and headed south to Humboldt State park. For a camping destination we settled on Burlington camp ground, which turned out to be the bigger of the campgrounds and closer to the main road, so it was convenient. It was a nice campground, though busy and crowded. There were some good sites left and we quickly narrowed it down to two, one at the far end, which would be quieter as it was on the far end and away from traffic and was near a nice new bathroom. It was spacious and set apart from the neighbors on either side.

The other site was near the entrance and in the edge of the campground near the main road, but it was huge and Wayne found it irresistible because it was centered in a circle of old growth stumps which featured the rectangular niches chopped in them to hold the planks the lumbermen stood on as they sawed the trees down with big double ended saws. The circumference of the stumps showed just how young and small the towering trees around us were. There was a carpet of redwood needle segments on the ground that gave off a pleasant spicy smell that wasn't familiar to me but smelled wonderful. We were across the main road from a special grove of trees. We didn't walk through that grove so it was nice that we could see it.  Of course that was the site we chose.

Our campsite was ringed by this and a number of other old growth stumps

On the down side, I was dubious about the older somewhat run down looking bathroom that was nearby. I was right to be dubious. When I got a closer look I saw that the side near the road had 4 doors leading to shower rooms. The other side had four doors leading to individual bathroom stalls. However, there were also three porta-johns in front of that side and I soon discovered that the reason for that was that three of the four bathrooms were out of order. That was a serious drawback and made for a less than ideal situation. There was no way the one plumbed bathroom would serve all the campers around it and once someone got in there they tended to stay awhile. The paper towels were all gone and people were trying to use the toilet seat protectors to dry their hands on. One of the johns was out of TP, too, and considering the number of people they were serving I felt like they should be replacing them with clean ones every day. The one I used when I saw it in daylight was approaching being full. Ick.

Anyway, we set up camp and I got the Pyromid barbecue going. Wayne had taken some photos of the stumps and met our neighbors two camps down, who were retired and had been camping for a year in their snazzy larger teardrop trailer with attached tent, a T@B brand. They had a sister in law named Mary Lou with them for a couple of weeks. They were very nice folks who I met the next day when we had a nice long visit before getting on our way.

The nifty rig our neighbors were camping in. Just what my hubby would love to have

While the coals were getting hot enough to cook on,  Wayne taught me how to use my new Buck knife to make tinder, kindling  and smaller pieces of wood from the bundle we bought when we checked in. I had to admit the technique of using one of the pieces as a hammer to knock the knife through the wood was an improvement over an ax. There was a great deal of control in the method that resulted in a very useful pile of different sizes of sticks that we could burn up before turning in. I broke apart a couple of the chunks of fire wood before I had to turn to making dinner. I made us salads to go with our hamburgers and got the burgers on to grill while Wayne continued to use the knife to break up the wood. When I went to look at the teardrop trailer and take a few photos before it got too dark, Wayne finished up the burgers. It was an outstanding meal. I had brought a pound of organic, grass fed ground beef and used half of it for the two burgers. They were as tender, char-grilled, juicy and flavorful as any I have had before.

Our spacious camp, taken from where the van was parked. Wayne is flipping burgers 

Dinner will be ready soon. The fire ring was really deep to protect the needle strewn ground from sparks, but it also didn't give off as much heat...We loved the fire anyway. 

It was growing dark when we finished and I went up to the bathroom with the dirty dishes. There were two big laundry sinks at the end of the bathroom building and hot and cold running water, so that was one good thing about the bathroom.

While I cleaned up the dinner things and got all the food and kitchen gear back into the van, Wayne showed me some tips for making a good fire and keeping it going as he built our fire for the night in the nearby fire ring. He uses a leanto method of setting up the kindling and tinder. It would have been good to have more nights of campfires so I could have practiced it for myself, but this turned out to be our last night of camping. We had a wonderful fire and sat in our new chairs comfortably talking by the firelight. By this time the aggressive mosquitoes we'd doped ourselves up against in the earlier evening had died down and weren't bothering us anymore. We started out using my Melaleuca natural repellant, but it didn't faze them, so we quickly resorted to the OFF deep woods to get relief. We were proactive enough to keep from getting any bites.

We had an odd interruption to our night. I got up at 4 am to go to the bathroom and slipped into the one bathroom stall just as someone drove up to it in their car. I wondered why someone needed to drive to the bathroom at 4 am, but just got done and back to my cot as quick as I could. As I was trying to get back to sleep I noticed an odd flickering light on the back side of the tent and wondered who would be burning a fire in the next camp over at that hour when everyone else was asleep. But then I put in my ear plugs and snuggled down and went back to sleep. The next day Wayne told me the rest of the story. He must have woken up before I woke up or after I got back to sleep and he noticed the light, only it was much brighter. He looked out and saw that the guy in the next site had built up a fire that was raging so big that it was reaching flames up almost to the upper tree limbs. With a deep layer of dry needles on the ground, he feared the trees and needle layer on the ground would catch fire and was trying to decide whether to go talk to the guy or to get ready to flee to the car with me, leaving the tent and its contents behind to be burned up in the forest fire this guy was starting. But before he had to do anything the ranger came over and told the guy he couldn't burn that big of a fire and the guy toned it down quite a bit. Our neighbor turned out to be a bit of a crazy guy, grizzled, with long gray hair and a scraggly beard and rough clothing who didn't seem to have any transportation or any camping gear besides his tent and talked about how when 'she' came back they were going to have to head up into the mountains to hide out from the man. He talked about how he was achieving his destiny and that it had been hard but he wouldn't trade it for anything.

Thursday, September 6th
Other than that the night was good, and we woke pretty well rested. We had our breakfast and took showers and then packed up camp. I was a little nervous about the shower since there were so many people in the campground. I figured the showers would be really dirty with lots of hair on the floor, which is so gross. I lucked out though. As I went to choose one, I passed up the first two because the doors wouldn't open and I figured they were in use. Then, come to think of it, every time I saw the bathroom from that side those two doors were closed and the two on the left were open. Did that mean they were out of order? But then I realized that the second one in had seemed like it gave a little when I pushed it so I went back and pushed harder and it opened up. Not only that, the floor of the shower was clean and dry and the floor of the changing area was only somewhat dirty. I realized that lots of people had thought the same thing and passed it by. Showers were coin operated though, so I brought in a stack of quarters, but resolved to see how few I could get by with. Two would buy me two minutes and I had enough quarters for 8 minutes. I managed to take a two minute shower with a little time to spare, but was moving so fast to get clean that I didn't spend time adjusting the temperature. I had turned the the knob all the way over to the left hot water indicator, not knowing how long it would take to warm up and not wanting to waste time waiting for that, but it stayed lukewarm to the point of being somewhat cool, so I was just as glad to finish quickly. The laundry sink water was never really hot either, so I figured that was just how hot it was set, or it was not keeping up with morning showers. Wayne had a nice hot shower though and I found out I shouldn't have changed the position of the knob as the shower started. He used one of the more used showers, so his was less clean and not dry. It felt good to get showered even with the cool temperature of the water.

Once we were all packed up we went to take some pictures around the campground. He had spotted a big old hollowed out tree with a tent pitched inside it. We had the conversation with the neighbors on our way to do that, and after that we walked around the campground. We still had some time before check out when we finished that, so we walked on over to the nearby visitor's center where I bought a souvenir hat pin and we looked at the exhibits for a short time. There was a camper truck in there from a hundred years ago that was made from a hollowed out redwood log.

The trees containing a full size tent set up the the hollow

The tent in the tree. It didn't seem to be connected to a reserved or occupied site...

Our new friends had shown us a brochure that they got there that had a map and helpful information about things to see, plus they had been there a couple of days and told us an out of the way place to go to see really good example of old growth groves without so many crowds. We headed up the old scenic highway and went first to the really popular Founders grove with the Founders tree. We had a nice hike around a loop trail and were awed by the trees and took lots of photos. The morning was warming with clear blue skies. It was another lovely day. There were lots of cars in the parking area but we didn't run into a lot of people on the short loop trail we took, so many of the people must have been on longer hikes.

The Founders tree makes you feel pretty small....

The downed trees in the grove were as impressive as the standing trees in a way, they were so big around they dwarfed us as we stood by them and they were so long, they stretched out of sight and couldn't be fit into one photo frame, even at an angle. The trees stretched up so tall, it was hard to even comprehend how tall they were or to show that adequately in a photo, but we tried. I got at the bottom of one and shot straight up to get most of it in. Later I took photos just shooting straight over my head to include the circle of the trees towering around me.

The height of a tree....

The length of a section of fallen tree

So many tall, tall trees...

It almost make you dizzy being surrounded by so many tall, tall trees...

Our next objective was the grove our friends said was even better, (Rockefeller Grove) but much less visited. We soon found out why. The road that led to it was very narrow, to the point we wondered if we would have to back up at some point when something bigger came from the other way! When we found the road to the grove there was a sharp drop off and Wayne had to back and make a turn almost completely back around the other way. That put my side so close to the edge in a maneuver that threatened to tip us off the side so that I had to close my eyes and do some deep breathing, because I was in danger of having a panic attack. For Real. It tripped off my old phobia of going down from high places. I'd had some other dicey moments in the mountains the day before too. We were travelling remote mountain roads that were narrow with tight curves in some places and sometimes steep drop offs falling away from the very edge of the road, right outside my passenger side window. I sometimes had to avert or even close my eyes. Glad he was driving and not me.

We were surprised to find almost no place to park in this little out of the way spot. Here we discovered even fewer folks in the grove, but there were definitely trails nearby, so again it was likely the cars mostly belonged to hikers. The loop trail here wound through impressive redwoods even more dense and tall than the Founder's grove. We had it mostly to ourselves. We found one tree that was overgrown with grotesque protrusions caused by an inner fungus. It was easy to see fantastic figures represented in these growths.

We thought this looked like a grizzly leaning up against the tree and turning it's head to look over it's shoulder

From this angle it looks like a horses' head peering around 

By this time we were ready for lunch, but there weren't any picnic tables at either grove. So we went further down the narrow road looking for another spot that might have picnic tables. I was so surprised at how much traffic passed us, but learned from Wayne that the road is actually a through road to a community outside the park. We stopped at a trailhead to a waterfall and found that there were picnic tables there, so we were able to have lunch. We didn't go to the falls though. We weren't sure how far the hike was and we had seen a lot of wonderful falls by this point anyway. The yellow jackets were quite aggressive here also, so we set up another lunch meat picnic for them. I had to put it pretty close to my plate to get them to keep off my food. It was fascinating to watch how they would cut sections out and carry them away. They made serious inroads on the meat we put out while we were there.

Lunch!

After lunch it was time to say goodbye to Humboldt Redwoods State park, so we got back on HIghway 101 and headed north, aiming for California Redwoods State and National park which is located on the coast.  Along the way we encountered a place called Elk Meadows. We laughed about that, saying how unlikely we were to actually seek Elk there these days. Our giggles turned to astonishment as we went around the next corner and encountered a cow elk right alongside the road! We pulled over right after that spot by a meadow that had a herd of elk grazing in it and lots of people parked and observing/taking photos from a safe distance. I got some video of one cow elk away from the others and nearer to us that was calling out in a plaintive squeak. Eventually she wandered back to where the rest of the herd was browsing on some bushes.

Browsing elk

She's calling, calling...

This was when we began to lose our beautiful clear weather. As is so normal for the Pacific Northwest Coast, the skies were off and on obscured by a marine layer of clouds. The farther North we went the more clouds and fog we experienced.

When we saw our first beach we pulled over and walked down to get our feet on wet sand and take in the briny air and watch and listen to the waves.

Further on we stopped at a visitor's center and got a map and some advice for things to see, but we didn't end up having much luck with finding sights to stop at. There was just too much fog. We no longer had time for extensive side trips. We did go up to the top of one bluff the ranger recommended for views of wildlife, but when we got up there the fog was so dense that we couldn't even see the water, let alone the seals and sea birds. We did meet a couple of guys up there that were from North Carolina, which was fun.

Visitor's center

We had already decided that camping in the fog, cold and possibly rain didn't seem like a lot of fun, so I spent some time looking at what was available both for a hotel and a place to have seafood for dinner. We settled on the Ocean View Inn, which turned out to be a great choice. Reviewers gave it good marks even though calling it retro 90s. They also kept mentioning the size of the rooms and that was no exaggeration. We had three big beds to choose from in a room that actually kind of dwarfed the beds. We were ocean side and could hear the fog horn softly blowing at intervals. No bugs in the beds, so we settled in.  We learned that the flight crews that fly into the local airport stay at that airport. I loved the big lobby, decorated with a mural and with large models of sailing ships up on high shelves. There was a good sized area nearby where breakfast would be served.

Ocean View Hotel

Model ships over the lobby

Mural in the lobby below the mezzanine

Breakfast!

Check in desk

A generous vanity area

Really big room

My search for a restaurant settled on a place called the Chart Room. The reviews were somewhat mixed, but mostly positive, and there weren't other choices that looked as good. We were so glad we went there. Wayne pronounced it the best seafood restaurant he'd ever eaten at, He had a grilled fish medley with salmon, halibut and one other kind of fish. I had a deep fried seafood combo, with prawns, clams and scallops. We both loved our choices. My dinner was HUGE! Wayne's wasn't as big, but the dinners came with baked potatoes, a dish of fresh vegetables, Texas toast, and clam chowder. We took the baked potatoes with us to eat somewhere else along the trip.

The restaurant

Clam Chowder

Wayne had the lobster bisque, and once he let me have a taste, I wished I had chosen it too...

The mixed seafood plate also comes with soup or salad and baked potato

When we got back to the room we went to bed fairly soon after. We didn't watch TV in any of our hotel rooms, preferring to stay more unplugged. Amy gave us some updates on the big news, which told us the world was going on without us. Hilary Clinton had collapsed and was in the hospital and wild rumors were flying around about her state of health. In the south a gasoline pipeline had broken and much of the south was now out of gas. Amy had three cars with full tanks and plenty of food on hand at home, prep specialist that she is, and expected to be ok. We used our phones to get info about our trip and keep in touch with our spouses and any friends or family that texted or called, but didn't search out news for the most part. I used my computer a little bit, but mostly to research things for the following day's travels. I wasn't in a rush to catch up with emails. We did check in with Facebook a lot on our phones and my computer because we were posting photos from our phones and were eager to see the reactions of friends and family. I was continually glad to have the usefulness of the phone, and missed it when we had no service (so glad the GPS service still worked when we really needed it).  That is one thing I love about vacations, it's so nice to unplug. And so nice to unplug and drift off to sleep to the sound of the fog horn outside.