In the morning, it was still lightly raining as we packed up and headed out of our campsite in Harris Beach, Oregon. We made it down to California in time to eat at some Mexican joint in Crescent City. We also found a playground in Crescent City that the kids enjoyed while I sat in the campervan and streamed a live dirtbike race on my phone. Since it’s the offseason until January, I needed a fix. We then backtracked a few miles to a commercial campground just across the street from the Jedediah State Park, home of massive redwoods. We decided to pay $45 for the commercial campground (electricity, water, WiFi) instead of $35 for the bare bones state park. We would later learn that your camping dollar doesn’t get you much in California; all state parks are $35 (about twice the going rate of most places we’ve been) and very few of them have hookups. The next morning, we squeezed and bounced the campervan up a dirt road to get to the Stout Grove trailhead, a hike Joe told us not to miss. It’s really amazing to see how big the redwoods are up close. Like trees, only bigger. We took a lot of pictures, but I don’t think they convey the size very well.
Oct 11 – We stopped for lunch at a greasy spoon before continuing south down the coast. This part of the route is called the Redwood Highway. The trees are so tall in places, that it seemed like we were driving at the bottom of a very narrow, dark canyon. We drove way out to Gold Bluffs beach campground, but decided not to stay there. We did see elk out at the beach, though, which was neat. We kept moving south, eventually pulling into Big Lagoon County Park just before dark. We found a huge private campsite right on the lagoon at the very back of the campground. We had a nice fire before the wind and cold chased us inside. It was here that we encountered our first pay showers. You put quarters in and it turns on – $1.25 for 7 minutes.
We drove most of the day on the 12th. We did stop at the Cypress Grove goat cheese factory, but they don’t offer tours. They did, however, give us a package of their lavender and fennel goat cheese. Sounds weird. Tastes really great. After a long day in the car, we finally stopped for the day at Richardson Grove State Park. $35 for a patch of dirt and a picnic table. Doing our part to help dig California out of massive debt, I guess. The most exciting thing that happened here was that Brooks took a dump on the toilet just before he went to bed. He was really proud of himself, which made all of us laugh.
