Advertisement
Cache creek
Jess & the dog walking along the creek The Rand McNally atlas of the U.S. we are using as our main guide on this trip is very, very good in many respects. One of the few areas it falls down on is giving the names of smaller highways and roads, which are depicted in light gray. We knew we wanted to go Clear Lake State Park, and we knew there was a highway heading there, we just didn't know
what highway. We stopped to ask for directions at a Chase Bank in Woodland, and the extremely kind tellers there printed up a Google Map for us. We wanted Route 16, it turned out, which proved to be a scenic drive through golden fields and farms filled with heritage cattle.
We stopped for lunch along Cache Creek, and ate outside, enjoying the warm weather. Swallows nesting on the bridge, a mallard and her ducklings, a white-tailed doe, and swallowtail and viceroy butterflies provided us with entertainment. After another short drive, we stopped at a trailhead on Bear Creek. Since no one else was about, we let Rascal off leash for a while, and he clambered about over rocks in the stream bed and snapped at gnats.
Driving again through farmland, we spotted a young elk and a farmyard with an interesting assortment of livestock: one horse, one cow, one donkey, one goat, one sheep. Turning onto CA-175, we drove along an avenue of oaks and a twisty mountain road, surrounded by thick forest. We made it to Clear Lake eventually, and selected a campsite. Whenever the wind blew, the cottonwoods in the campground released so many seeds that it appeared to be snowing. The fluff built up in drifts on the roadside and caught in the screens of our windows, whiting out the world. The path behind our campsite wound along the river and was lined with fisher folk, poison oak, and mosquitoes: one good thing, and two bad. We stayed at Clear Lake for two days, enjoying gorgeous weather and scenery, and some of the best wildlife sightings of the trip. Every time we walked the campground's main road, we saw something new. Mule deer, wild turkeys, turtles, carp, black bass, ospreys, swallows, quail in pairs, robins, grebes, squirrels, canada geese, and more songbirds than you could shake a stick at, including one that sounded eerily like a howler monkey. Not in pitch
Its white?!
This little one landed on Jessica. Have you ever seen a white lady bug? or volume, mind you, but tone and rhythm. We also found handfuls of obsidian lying like a child's lost treasure in the oak leaves.
Part of the reason we stayed a second day was that it was Julia's 22nd birthday, and neither of us felt like celebrating it by spending half the day driving. We didn't actually do anything special for it, but it was nice to just walk around the park. The day after though, we celebrated. We drove through redwoods up to Fort Bragg, a very scenic little town, and had lunch at the japanese restaurant Taka's Grill. We enjoyed a delicious meal, starting with piping hot tea, vegetable gyoza (dumplings), and edamame (soybeans). Jessica had pork katsudon (breaded cutlets over rice), and Julia had zarusoba (cold buckwheat noodles with dipping sauce) and tempura. For dessert, we headed right next door to Cowlick's Handmade Ice Cream, and licked our cones while walking around downtown. Despite the presence of some...
interesting flavors on the menu (Mushroom ice cream? Really?), we each ended up with something we loved. For Jessica, rich, decadent, black forest ice cream hit the spot, and Julia savored a twofer cone with mint
Quail
Two of the many that we saw. chocolate chip and cookie dough.
We read the informative plaques outside the Guest House Museum (closed) and discovered that though the town was named for the fort, no one today knows exactly where Fort Bragg stood. The guest house, at that point a medic station, was on the premises though, and is the only remaining building. Beside the museum stood the vast ring of some ancient redwood, cut down in the 1920's after centuries of slow growth. We took Rascal for a window shopping tour of downtown, then stopped at Mendo Cookies to take advantage of their wi-fi, where Jessica had an excellent chai tea and Julia had some decent lemonade.
We stopped for the evening at McKerricher State Park, a campground set amongst beautifully wind-sculpted trees. Their visitor station at the entrance had grey and humpback whale skeletons displayed outside, but Rascal was not too curious about these huge bones. After all, they were much too big to chew on properly. We took a walk out to the beach, past tall sand dunes closed to any foot traffic as the rangers worked to reestablish the natural ecosystem. As we got close to the
Squirrel!
He is such a silly dog. beach, the sand underfoot grew darker until it was almost pitch black. Warning signs by the beach warned of rogue waves, of rip-currents just off-shore, and of the water's freezing temperatures. All in all, the signs boiled down to this: don't go near the water, causing Jessica and I to look at each other in dismay. We're southern Californians, remember, where the beaches are friendly and the water (fairly) warm.
Out on the breezy boardwalk, we looked out at chilly tide-pools, flocks of western gulls, a solitary osprey fighting the headwind, and harbor seals with pups. On later walks, we spotted deer, feral cat tracks, and smelled, distinctly and unmistakably, the odor of skunk. The next day, we stopped for more tide pool photos, then climbed faintly through redwood forest. We visited the World-Famous Drive Through Tree, which our motor home could not make live up to its name. In the lake behind the gift shop, Rascal and Julia encountered a veritable army of bullfrogs and their offspring. Every step we took was accompanied by a loud "plop!" as another frog vacated the shore for the safety of the water.
As we passed along
Black Glass
Obsidian was lying around every where on our walk the shore again for a while, we saw more mother harbor seals and their babies, just chillaxing on the rocks. We also passed what felt like a hundred signs for CONFUSION HILL!?!?!?, and had to check it out, just to satisfy our own curiosity. We won't spoil it for you. If you ever pass the signs for it, you too can experience the curiosity it generates. We stopped early at Richardson's Grove State Park, in amongst the old growth redwoods. The awe these trees inspire, the sense of being surrounded by the weight of ages... it's an amazing feeling. We'd intended to take the rest of the day and go out to Shelter Cove, supposedly one of California's most beautiful beaches... but we could not confirm this for ourselves, since the road out to it has been poorly maintained, and is steep and windy to boot, making it distinctly unfriendly to motor homes. Returning to Richardson's Grove, we took a walk along the nature trail as dusk approached, watching the antics of the little brown bats.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.085s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0327s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Jenny
non-member comment
Vicarious travel
Thank you for sharing these delightful moments.