Tripometer – 8553 mi
Gas Gauge – 659.195 gal
Location – Big Lagoon County Park, Trinidad, OR
Lodging – $38
Cans of OFF – 4
This morning was foggy and cold as we woke. We decided to only pop out one tent bunk on the trailer and leave the trailer hitched to the truck last night to make the pack-up this morning quick and easy. We were on the road with only a few minutes of effort.
After a hot breakfast at a local diner we took Ranger for a run and swim on the beach. It’s been more than a few days since we’ve been able to swim him and only the second time we’ve been able to swim him in the surf. The beach here was a bit steeper than the last time he swam in the surf and consequently the waves were a bit rougher. We were both watching the first time he got tumbled by a wave. The look on his face was pretty impressive to say the least. He didn’t seem to put off by the experience, though a little wary, but the NEXT time a large wave was headed his way he scooted out of the way so fast we both had a really good laugh. Apparently you can fool him once…
We’ve driven past and over many rivers in the past few days along the coast. Whenever we’re near the mouth of the river the number of boats fishing there increases exponentially. We’re guessing that it’s the salmon run. Today while driving through a small coastal town we ran over a salmon in the middle of the road. It seemed oddly appropriate.
The point of this weekend was to make some good distance down the coast towards LA. We’re making progress every day but the going is slow along the coast mostly due to the windy coast road and the speed that we need to take the road when hauling the trailer. The scenery along the coast has been fantastic and we are very hesitant to move our travel route inland. Our fearless driver Kelly, though, is beginning to show some signs of strain. Lassen Volcanic National Park was also on our list of parks to visit on this trip. This park dropped from the schedule today as we realized it would take us two days of travel time plus visiting days to tour the park. It’s simply not in the cards this trip.
We drove through Redwoods NP and the associated State Parks today. The sheer size of these monster trees is humbling and amazing to experience every time we have the opportunity. All of the campgrounds in the Redwoods forest had no usable cellular signal and Kelly needs to work in the morning so we had to keep going. We passed at least two different campgrounds that had campsites situated in and amongst the huge old redwoods (and in one case, amongst huge redwood stumps) and we had to keep travelling.
We camped this evening at a tiny community park right on the coast. We were both horrified at the cost of tonight’s lodging. The small size, dilapidated campsites and horrifically smelling restrooms at this campground make it the lowest value we’ve run across for a campsite. The sunset on the other hand was amazing. We spent the evening drinking a bottle of wine and commenting on the attire of our fellow campers, most of whom were dressed to appear in a eastern European gypsy documentary.