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.