From the Forest to the Sea

After spending the day before in the old-growth forests, we decided to explore the coast around the Klamath River a bit.  We drove up to two different lookout points, one on the south side of the mouth of the Klamath and one on the north.  We also rushed out to the beach near us after dinner to catch the sunset.  I also wanted to try to photograph the crescent moon in interesting ways.  We were pretty exhausted after lots of dirt road rides and walking up and down bluffs and through the sand, but it was a good day!

First a few pics taken from our campground on the river:

This view of the sunrise mist on the river  REALLY reminds me of Clam Pudding Pond.  A little homesick, I guess.

These were shot from the overlook on the north side of the Klamath mouth looking south:

Next stop was the overlook on the south side of the mouth looking north.  The rock in the first picture below is the same one as in the picture above from the other overlook.

We also explored a really interesting site shown in the picture below.  This concrete block building was built during WWII to look like a farmhouse but it was actually a radar and lookout station on the alert for a Japanese attack!  Now it is primarily occupied by banana slugs.

This little guy is the mascot of my alma mater, UC Santa Cruz.

Sunset and moonset at the beach at the mouth of the Klamath. The haystack rocks you see are very common on this coast.

This building is a traditional Yurok sweat lodge, still in use by the locals.

Not photoshopped (I don't have or know how to use Photoshop), this is actually Lynnae's hand in the picture.

Old-growth Redwood Forests

I have been anticipating our trip to this area for months, having great memories of the coast redwoods from my college days and much of the time we lived in California.  These forests are like none other I have experienced.  The quiet is palpable and it feels more like a cathedral than a forest.  In a way it is a dead forest, as you see few birds or squirrels and the ground is soft with hundreds of years of falling needles. We drove through Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, part of the complex of federal and state parks that manage 90% of the remaining old-growth redwood forests up here.  The road was narrow, twisting and magnificently beautiful. We'll be visiting other redwood forests in the days to come.

This stump was by the side of the road and, despite the graffiti, is awe-inspiring by its sheer size. The rest of the tree must have been logged back before this was a park because it was not to be seen.

Lynnae between two trees that fell away from each other, leaving huge roots (now fern gardens)

From tiny cones, the tallest trees in the world are born!

Beautiful Klamath River

This campground is in one of the most beautiful settings of our journeys.  Sunsets and sunrises are spectacular and made more evocative by the near-constant fog and mist that winds through the coastal hills.

The sites along the river are a bit crowded, but the views make up for it!

Taken through our living room window at sunset after the rains cleared.  And this is facing East!

Facing West for the same sunset. Taken from our open door.

Exploring the Redwood Coast

Raining today, and forecasting constant rain all today and showers for the next few days, so we are hunkered down at home doing laundry and catching up on loose ends. Yesterday we did get some exploring in, but the clouds and dull light made for limited photography opportunities.

We explored the beach at the mouth of the Klamath River, then went up highway 101 to the Trees of Mystery.  This iconic tourist trap has been a family operation since 1946 and is best known for it's huge statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Blue Ox looming over the highway.  It is actually a great place for the tourist rushing by on their way to San Francisco to get a couple hour introduction to the Redwoods, see some huge stumps and ride a gondola up a short mountain through the forest.

After Lynnae got caught playing with the Ox, we opted out of the tour and just visited a little-known gem of the attraction, which is a museum built around the collection of a woman named Marylee Thompson, now in her 90's.  It houses a very decent amount of Native American artifacts, divided into rooms for the various regions of the country. They have some very nice pieces indeed:

As the afternoon closed in, we headed a few miles north to False Klamath Cove and it's beach.  Very characteristic of the coastline up here, this beach had many large haystack rocks offshore.  There were also nice tidepools and lots of birds.

Oystercatcher

The wind was so strong, Tucker almost flew away ;-)

The sand was very dark grey, almost black.  This shell is about 1/2" across.

There will be better days to capture the beauty of this coastline in the weeks ahead, so come back often!

Back to the Pacific Coast

207 days ago, on March 9 to be exact, we left San Clemente on the Orange County coast and headed inland to begin our exploration of the deserts and mountains of California.  Today we headed west from the Trinity Alps area and reached the coast near Eureka ("I have found it!") California.  We stopped for lunch at a summit just before we reached the coast and saw the fog rolling in over the coastal range.

We drove through some of the redwood parks and past some rugged coastline before arriving at the mouth of the Klamath River in Klamath, CA.  We will be here a week and plan to explore the many parks and beaches of the area before heading just a bit further south for another week.  All-in-all, we will be on the Redwood coast for about three weeks and we are both very excited about being back in these beautiful forests. Rain is forecast for most of this week, so the weather may not be ideal, but we are thrilled that there might be rain in this drought-ridden state so early in the rainy season.  Fingers crossed.  Our campground is right on the Klamath River and the setting is GORGEOUS.  I'm sure I will have some fun taking pictures here!  A few  from our first afternoon, all taken from our campground.

Our neighbor, Rick from Bakersfield, fulltimer and life of the party

Lynnae, and Tucker walking with our neighbors from Orange County

A "Patriot" from Weaverville

Nancy is a local resident of Weaverville who chatted with us for a bit on Sunday before we left for the coast.  She works in a seasonal job and is about to be laid off for the winter when she will collect unemployment until spring.  She complained about the economy in Weaverville where there are rich people, "people on welfare" making babies or on disability and the middle class like her who are struggling to make ends meet.  She is a Tea Party Patriot and somehow didn't see the irony of her decrying the people on welfare while she collected unemployment from the government half the year. She also admitted she and her husband hadn't made a mortgage payment for two years and were trying to prove that Wells Fargo didn't actually have a legal claim on their property due to the fact that they didn't seem to have the original note for the mortgage.  She had a good crop of marijuana about to be harvested and it was already pre-sold to large grower they knew who exported a large crop to Colorado.  It seems that growing pot is pretty common around here, but it doesn't seem that most people are making much money from it.

This far northern part of California was going to become the state of Jefferson, if the ballot initiative to split the state into six different states had passed.  As it turned out, they couldn't gather enough signatures to get on the ballot.  It is sure apparent that this area is worlds apart from Silicon Valley, 200 miles to the south.