Northern California

From the Peanuts Place, we explored that section of California after getting some essentials from the magic delivery at an Amazon Locker. We drove north and south from our campground over a few days, just looking around the coast mostly. We even attended Rockin' Friday Night in Cloverdale itself. They had shut down a couple blocks right downtown, hosted food and trinket vendors, and had some live local music. We did not have a hunger for trinkets, but Debbie allowed us to spend wayyy more money that she would have liked on unique local eats. We'd rather spend $48 on that than at Applebee's or some such any day. Been there, done those. We both discovered a unique (to us) roasted corn on the cob at one food booth called Mexican Street Corn. Both of us considered it really tasty and maybe we'll try to duplicate it. We had discovered Vietnamese sate at GR's Arts Festival near-about 40 years ago, and it's been a staple in Debbie's repertoire since.

It's closing-in on the 4^th of July and Debbie –our non-planner, remember-- begins to panic when thinking of the hordes of coaches, trailers, and pop-ups that might already have crowded us out of living quarters for the upcoming month. She gets online and starts making reservations here and there.

In the next few weeks, we found ourselves in several RV Parks, including one just down the road from The Legend of Bigfoot 

and across the street from both The Famous One-Log House and the World Famous Grandfather Tree.

Don't feel bad about the latter two; we'd never heard of either ourselves before reading the signs.

And, sorry, Sasquatch remains an unsubstantiated myth.

We also found a number of “preserves” dedicated to Saving The Coastal Redwoods. The thing is, as we discovered while driving along US-101, the Redwoods are very numerous in this part of the state and pretty much free-range flora; they really don't seem to need to be kept in pens.

On many sections of road, they were close enough to the asphalt that we expected them to jump in front of our car! And big enough to scare the bejeebers out you as they do.

Then there's the Mendocino Botanical Garden, which was somewhat extensive in size, squeezed between other coastal properties, but here only a small part of it is actively tended; we found the presentation -uh- eclectic, if not downright chaotic and non-educational. Rhododendrons especially abounded –as they do on most properties in this environ –and back in Michigan –and along parts of the Appalachian Trail that John has hiked back on that other coast.

Mendocino is a small town that also had a sort of Farmer's Market Day going when we were there. Debbie bought a cheese to try with our pre-dinner wine. It was pretty okay.

We discovered Shelter Cove along this state's  “Lost Coast” which is so named because, at one time, the only way to get to there was by boat. The steep California hills had stymied road building for a long time. These days it also has its own airport: Shelter Cove, 0Q5. It's about like Jenison's strip, but near foothills, with newer asphalt.

The narrow two-lane road leading to it off US-101 today is about 18 miles long, which is to say, a three-quarter hour drive.  It is posted at 55mph with 10- or 20mph yellow advisory signs at almost all the curves, which are nearly contiguous to the others! Debbie kept accusing John of drifting through the hairpins as he were in a video game. Boy, does he miss his Jeep!

Local volcanic rock fills the beaches with Black Sand along much of Northern California.

One evening we had our appetizer and drinks at the Benbow Inn, on the terrace overlooking the river, served by a real waitress who brought us salmon pâté and caviar. It wasn't even our anniversary; we just felt like pretending to be the kind of people who would do that, instead of divvying up a bottle of wine and tasty cheese on the lawn aside our home-with-six-wheels (or throwing money at BigFoot "souvenirs"). We left before the guitarist finished his acoustic warm-up. Debbie was singing along with Sweet Baby James Taylor's Fire and Rain lyrics.

As pervasive as the Sasquatch mythology seems to be in this part of the country, there are real life –alive– attractions. Our last California camp was at the Elk Country RV Park, not far from the coast, near Trinidad. The park's manager was adamant that we not bother the elk, but we were disappointed not to see any even though signs in the area warned of the hazards of encounters.

The next morning, however, we woke up to find a couple dozen females had settled into the front lawn.  The manager was kept busy shooing folks off.

A few miles up the road, at a state park, the guys were hanging out in longer grass.

Apparently these animals are like 7^th graders; the two sexes would rather be in their separate groups unless there are special social events.
 We call 'em “school dances.” They call it “the Rut.”

Those NorCal day trips finally led us to explore into Oregon, where it turned out John had married a Planner after all.
In the week before crossing the state line to the north, Debbie asked about 42 times what the latest mile-per-gallon cell showed on John's TripWest fuel spreadsheet, fretting that we might have to pay California's bandit tax for ten or 12 extra gallons of diesel just to get into blissful Oregon. As it turned out, when we did fill the tank at Grant's Pass, it took a little more than 120 gallons. The tank will hold 150. You see why Debbie's been scheming. Why should we donate that kind of fuel tax to a state government for which we have no respect?

She'd had us fill on Morongo tribal reservation land in western Arizona where there was no tax at all in the last week of May (but they charge just a little less than the stations that do need to pay tax, and apparently, keep the extra profit). Then she gritted her teeth for half a tank of $4++ diesel in Salinas, CA, in June. She'd planned our next fill up for Carson City, Nevada at the end of June where diesel was about 1.40 under California's $4.30/gal. And now –July 10th-- diesel at an Oregon Fred Meyer was only $3.19/gallon. Take that, Gavin Newsom, and stick it!

By the way, if you've not been West, don't confuse Fred Meyer with Fred Meijer, even though they're both in the same business and you could step from one store into the other without noticing any difference except the spelling. In the Eastern time zone, Meijer's family apparently had lagged Meyer's in the grocery biz by a dozen years.

Getting into Oregon we discover the state seems cruelly divided into high mountain sections with valley sections between and very few east-west roads connecting them. The coast is ragged with rocks, the mountains are many and some are still active volcanoes: Jefferson, Hood, and, of course, Mount Saint Helens. All are on our list for the weeks ahead.