We drove from Coos Bay, Oregon to Crescent City, California today. Beautiful drive down on Highway 101, nice spot at the campground, right by the California Redwoods.
I let everyone sleep as long as they wanted this morning as we had a long day yesterday, but everyone was up by 8:30. Now, we had just had a time change due to daylight savings, so that means they woke up at 9:30 on the “old time”, so good rest. I had woken up just a little earlier and tried to get some posts written as I was behind a bit, but as usual, my goal is to start working on getting ready no later than 9am, so that’s what we did. I knew I had to go return the crabbing equipment yet, so it’d take a little longer today. As expected, we didn’t go crabbing as Carol had hoped for… no-one woke up early, and we had a lot to do before we had to check out. When Bella woke up, she went right to counting her treats.
I got ready to go around 9 and went to return the crabbing stuff. Carol was starting to put things away, and I asked her to focus on getting the slide out retracted as that is usually what holds up the outside stuff. The girls were changed already and wrapping up getting ready. I was back in about 25 minutes and started working.
I wanted to also rinse off a lot of stuff before we put them away, pretty much everything that was outside was covered in sand and salt and needed a good rinse. The bed of the truck had send and we spilled beer there, and there was some fish we had in there. I first removed everything from the bed of the truck. I got the ladder and hosed the top of the slide out, then dried it so it was ready for Carol to retract it. Once the truck was empty, Bella hopped on and washed the bed for me, just with waster and a broom. I hosed down the bikes, and Bia then hosed down the rest, the chairs, table, etc. We then started drying things and putting them back on the bed of the truck. Pause here to say that our little foldable table, and the bike chains are rusty! I can’t believe how fast this shit works. We were here for 2 weeks, and there’s legit a good amount of rust on those. I’ll get some WD40 on the bike chains when we get to CA. We finished loading the truck, and while we were doing that I had the black tank flush going. I loaded the bikes and finished disconnecting the hoses. By this time Carol had closed the slide out, and was giving Maggie a bath. Bia and Bella’s help was great and really helped us keep our timing. Once we got the truck loaded, we finished disconnecting everything, Carol helped get the trailer hitched and we were out of our spot by 11:10am.
The drive to Crescent City, California was really nice. As we left the campground, we had to go through steep hills for about 30 minutes. We were going up and down some mountains and had tight corners, and steep up and down hills, until got closer to Bandon. Then we got to 101 and it was much better.
Once 101 gets to the beach, the drive is even more beautiful with constant views of the ocean, with cliffs, and the rocks by the water. We eventually stopped in one of the spots and had lunch.
We stopped maybe another 2 times to take some pictures of the views, breathtaking. Once we crossed the border with California, our campground was about 30 minutes away. To get to our campground we had to turn towards Jedediah Redwood State Park, and the little road is windy, tight turns, trees right to the edge of the road, but beautiful. Big tall and wide Redwoods. Our campground is right by the entrance of the park, so we’ll be visiting there soon. I have to say I was a little nervous about maneuvering the trailer in that area with the trees so close to corners, had to watch closely to make sure I didn’t hit a tree with the tail of the trailer.
We got to the campground, which is tucked in the middle of the woods, we checked in and extended our stay to Sunday right away as we can tell there’s a lot to see around here, and we want to make sure we monitor the smoke situation before we continue heading south.
We have a nice site for the week, so we pulled in, and got setup while the girls were playing and walking around. Lots of trees around us, and big trees, so they found some leaves that were bigger than their heads. After we finished setting up, I also organized the tools compartment in the back of the trailer, which is where I keep the hoses, levels, etc. It was a mess from our tear down last time. I also got WD40 on the bikes chains, and on the kick stands as they were getting stuck with all the rust.
The girls went biking around, and Bella “invented” a trick to get off the bike while they were out. She basically rides towards her stopping place, then stops pedaling and as the bike slows down, she pulls both legs out of the bike towards her left and jumps out and just continues walking, like nothing happened. It was pretty cool. She was so proud of it she did it a bunch of times, had us record it and send to people than wanted to call everyone to show it off.
We hung out outside for a bit. Carol was on the phone with her parents, then Dede, and made dinner during that time. I tried the “trick” to get the trailer outside lights on with a fuse, and it worked.
You basically stick the fuse between 2 specific spots on the electrical plug that goes in the car, and that closes the circuit for the lights and electrical and the lights come on. Pretty cool.
We got the girls going with getting ready for bed, then we had dinner, watched a bit of TV and got the girls to bed. It’s a school day tomorrow. Carol and I watched some TV and I got caught up on emails and such. It was a nice day, nice ride, and it’s good to be in warmer weather, so we are looking forward to continuing our trip and going south.