October 24, 2016 - Stairway to Hell

We’ve spent the last few days visiting our old haunts in Arcata where we went to school at Humboldt State. Back in the day, which was the hay-day of Humboldt Homegrown, in the town square you would get an occasional whiff of someone toking up a fatty on the sly. Now people who have medical aliments requiring medical marijuana treatment inhabit the whole town square. It actually makes for a very calming shopping experience at the cool shops around the square not to mention great appetites for the local restaurants.

The community redwood forest backs Humboldt State. The forest is full of trails I used to run as a student. Since we left they added a disc golf course in the forest and I was anxious to give it a whirl even though I knew it would be challenging in the heavily wooded area. Most disc courses are pretty well marked and even if obstacles abound there are signs pointing to the next hole. Not so here. I think the theme was to keep the course natural with minimal signage intrusions. So not only was the challenge to get the disc to the basket it was also to find the next tee. I think we played hole 15 before 13, missed 11 entirely, but enjoyed this sign for hole 18.

Many of our dates back in college days were long walks on the beach. Heartwarming to still be able to do that now.

October 21, 2016 A Paddling We Will Go

It’s a lot of work getting the kayaks on and off the truck, but peaceful paddling in pristine waters makes it totally worth it. I wanted to kayak Humboldt Bay, but backed out when a local told me that I needed to be able to paddle 7 knots/hour if caught on the wrong side of tidal shifts. I envisioned being sucked out to sea even though I had no idea how fast 7kph is. We opted to return to Big Lagoon, safe from tidal influences. Denis got rigged up for fishing from his kayak.

 I was equipped with the landing net should he be so lucky which required me to paddle close by him without getting in the way of his line. Unfortunately my netting skills weren’t needed. Denis tested his theory that he could use an umbrella as a sail for the kayak, perhaps because of lack of wind his theory didn’t pan out.

After a great day of paddling it was time to visit a different type of Lost Coast, this one is a brewery serving up local beer and providing the Thursday night Packer game. I love that Packer fans are everywhere!

October 20, 2016 Eureka!

After a couple days of rural fairground camping we were ready for a full hook-up RV park not far from town.  We found a flaw in our dining bench drawer design, in that the locks weren’t strong enough to keep the drawers closed while we were on the road. We thought this might happen and devised a backup plan to replace the locks with magnets. Also when the drawers flew open items stored behind the drawers flew forward as well and then the drawers couldn’t close. I bear the blame for these calamities since I am the one weighting down the dinette with my culinary tools.

Our normal process for these repairs would be to visit the closest Home Depot or Lowe’s for parts, but not in Eureka. They’ve managed to keep the big box hardware guys outta town so we went to the local hardware/lumber store.  What a pleasant experience. Lumber staff cut the wood we needed to go in the back of the drawers to exact size and had the magnets we pictured as the cure to our self-opening drawers. You see where I’m going with this. The wood partitions did the trick holding back items from falling into the path of the drawers, but Denis says my heavy drawers would need so many magnets we wouldn’t be able pull them open. Now we just fold up area rugs and block the drawers from flying open.

October 18, 2016 – Officially on Our Road Trip

Although we’ve already been on the road with Scoop and Molly, we consider October 18, when we left Redding, as the true start of our road trip. Everything up to this point has been preparation for the months of road tripping we will experience. In Redding we had the help and support of our dear friends, now we are on our own going where we want when we want. No reservations, no set plan, just experiencing as we go along.

What better place to start the adventure than the Lost Coast of California. The Lost Coast is a desolate, rugged 30 mile stretch of coastline with a backpacking trail touted as one of the most spectacular in the U.S. I backpacked it 38 years ago (pre Denis days) and thought Denis should see it in case he wanted to return for a backpack trip in the future, or just dump me and the rig and take off. As luck would have it we only got 3 miles down the beach trail where we hit an impassible section because the tide was in, Denis had to stay with us! The road to get to the Lost Coast is as remote as the trail except for the community of Petrolia that used to be a market with little run down shacks around it. Now the same market is surrounded by properties enclosed with eight foot fences hiding the abundant grows, but not able to keep in the aroma of Humboldt’s finest about ready to harvest.

Humboldt County Fairgrounds

 There was no way we would be able to tow Scoop on the road to the Lost Coast so we camped at the Humboldt County Fairgrounds in Ferndale. We pretty much had the place to ourselves since it is off-season, but there were a few groups of “trimigrants” camping while working the crops here. Evidently good trimigrants can make decent ching, we’ve put it on the list of potential back-up careers.

October 13, 2016 - A Lifetime in 11 Weeks

It seems like a lifetime since I last posted in July. In the last 11 weeks we:

• Flew back to Ohio and packed up all our household belongs
• Hosted Laine & Angel for a week in our soon-to-be-vacated Dayton homStored all our belongings in 2 Pods and 2 storage units (my fault for not ordering enough Pods)
• Drove to Minnesota to get some MN Durgin time, love up on Tweedle and sell the St. Cloud house (finally!!)
• Drove back to Reno via Rocky Mountain, Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Great Basin National Parks
• Got Denis out in the Sierras for 3 weeks of backpacking while I based in Reno and provided supply runs to Pinecrest, Cherry Lake, Twin Lakes and Yosemite
• Spent a girls weekend with three high school besties to celebrate our 40^th high school reunion
• Drove to Los Angeles with the folks to attending our nephew TJ’s wedding and meet our kids there too
• Took Scoop out of storage for 3 days and camped in a Sparks RV park to do annual preventative maintenance and had Denis’ parents over to the park for a BBQ

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Colorado River headwaters

 

Pinecrest Lake, CA

Start of the Great Trek

Today we drove to Doodie and Dave’s home in Redding as I planned a drawer remodel to our dinette area requiring woodworking tools and combined brain power to complete. It’s our third visit to their home since we hit the road with scoop, I think they are going to start charging us a camping fee.

July 25, 2016 - 35 Years and Still Paddling

Today was our last day on the road with Scoop and Molly until October. Following our life re-org plan our travelling home will go into storage in Reno while we fly back to Ohio and pack-up our worldly belongings and put them into Pods for safe keeping until we figure out where we will settle next.  When the Ohio pack-out is all done we will drive Tai Tai (my Mazda CX-5) back to Reno.

Today is also a significant one for us – our 35 year wedding anniversary, or as Denis says, “our 350 year anniversary.” On this last day of our journey we decided to stop in Lassen Volcanic National Park. On a whim we pulled up to Manzanita Lake in the park and dropped in our kayaks for a paddle around this pristine alpine lake. It was a wonderful way to celebrate our anniversary.

It took quite a few phone calls to RV storage facilities in Reno to find an opening. We really wanted something covered to protect Scoop and Molly from the blistering Nevada sun, but all facilities were booked so had to take an open spot. We countered by buying an RV cover for Scoop and prepped for cover installation by watching YouTube how-to videos. Rule number one is: do not try to put the cover on in the wind. Because we were flying to OH the next day, we had no option but to try to get the 28-foot-long by 12-foot-tall nylon cover over Scoop on a very windy desert day.

One of my kid’s favorite books when they were little was Up Goes Mr. Downs about an elderly man selling balloons and they carry him away. Now I’m not calling Denis an elderly man even though it is our 35^th anniversary, but I thought he was going to take off from Scoop’s roof while he struggled to get the ballooning nylon cover around the trailer. I saved him with my not-so-quick tie down skills. I wish we would have video taped our process for the YouTube section on how NOT to do things. I do think our ultimately successful management of the giant cover makes us a qualified crew for the upcoming Reno Hot Air Balloon Races.