2008 – Week 20

Tuesday, September 9, 2008:
Very foggy morning, but I didn’t hear the foghorn or notice any wind when Daisy and I took our walk. Temperature was the same old 56 degrees and the humidity 78%. This morning I read that in 1998 Oregon Parks were suffering from a lack of money and so in a referendum, the voters decided to use the profits from the lottery to fund the parks. As a result, the parks are in good shape and money is available to purchase more land. This seems like a better way to spent lottery money than some I know. We left the campground and visited the Umpqua Lighthouse at the mouth of the Umpqua River. The river flows southwest as it enters the ocean and as a result, the jetties are also skewed. From the seaward end of the jetties for about a 1/4-mile inland, the seas are quite rough. As we were watching the waves (all this in the fog) I noticed a white-hulled ketch of about 50 feet leaving the harbor. We watched with fascination as she tried to motor through the waves, one of which almost stood the boat on her transom. I couldn’t help but think what would have happened if the engine quit. She seemed to make it through the jetties to the ocean, but we lost track of her as she became lost in the fog. There were numerous bikes on the road today, but the one tandem bike we saw brought forth the question as to why do the guys always seem to ride in front? My answer to this is if the girl were in front, they would stop at every art gallery and never get anywhere. We met a group of bicyclists on a tour that had started in Seattle and would finish in Los Angeles. We saw them all day in a game of the tortoise and the hare. They kept plodding along, not seeming to stop to view the sights while we roared from viewpoint to viewpoint. This particular tour had bright yellow shirts and the bikes were equipped with red strobe lights. I complemented them on the equipment noting it made them much more visible to the cars. A good portion of our trip passed by the southern section of the Oregon Dunes NRA. US101 sometimes runs through and sometimes is on the east side of the dunes, but the common fact was that the sand was moving east and while not yet encroaching on the road soon will. We know from seeing this happen at the south end of Lake Michigan and the White Sands National Monument in NM that the sand is unstoppable. OHV’s and ATV’s are allowed in some parts of the Dunes, and there are numerous rental places for this equipment along US101. The Oregon Coast is full of tsunami warning signs, either telling you that you are entering or leaving a danger zone. After 2 hours, we didn’t have a clue whether we were in danger or not. There is a large fishing industry presence in the city of Coos Bay and the smaller town of Charleston on the other side of the river. We liked the local canned tuna that we bought in Garibaldi OR about a month ago (seems that it cannot be that long) that we bought more plus fresh tuna in Charleston. The tuna in Garibaldi was much cheaper but we thought we’d try this. We continued south, but took a detour from US101 to follow a beach road that led us to Cape Arago SP. On our way, we stopped at the Simpson Reef lookout to view the reefs. As we opened the RV door, we heard the sea lions. There were many more than we saw yesterday and include Steller Sea Lions (about 600 lbs), California Sea Lions (about 750 lbs) and Harbor Seals (about 300 lbs). The Stellar Sea Lions were the ones making the racket, and what a great noise it was. We watched for about a half-hour and then moved to Cape Arago, less than a 1/4-mile away. The noise from the sea lions was much greater as we were downwind. The reefs were magnificent, and it was noted that all the Oregon Islands are owned by the State and no one is allowed on them. Continuing on south, towards the town of Bandon (supposedly the location of 2 great golf courses) we saw numerous cranberry bogs. The area is the biggest producer of cranberries in OR. We continued south and stopped again for the night at the Blanco Cape SP in the hopes that the fog would have cleared, and we could get better pictures than a few days ago. No such luck! It is now 8:00pm, 59 degrees, dark and windy. What happened to the long evenings? The moon is half full and peaking through the wispy clouds.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008:
It was 52 degrees and clear this morning, and Daisy and I took our walk out to the Cape Blanco Lighthouse and took a few pictures. When we returned, we packed up the RV and headed to the laundromat to wash an incredible amount of dirty laundry. While we were at the Laundromat, we were told that Cape Blanco is the westernmost point of Oregon. True, but Cape Flattery WA is the most western (and northwestern) point of the lower 48. After laundry we continued down US101 as the mountains came right down to the ocean, forcing us inland for a bit. We came to Cape Sebastian (elev 690 feet) and had great views to both the north and south. It was cold and windy, but we had lunch here anyway. We continued south and found a scenic viewpoint and beach at Hunters Cove and noticed that the winds were less and the temperature more.
The wind had sculpted the beach sand, making for interesting shapes. Susie took a number of sand dollars she had collected and did two Andrew Goldsworthy type sculptures with them. The blowing sand created interesting shapes, but the winds quickly blew down the shells. Daisy ran and ran on the beach while Susie was doing her work. We reached the Samuel H. Boardman State Park, a 12-mile linear park, just to the north of Brookings OR. Samuel Boardman headed the Oregon Parks Department from 1929 through 1950 and is known as the ‘Father of Oregon Parks’. Thanks to him, the State of Oregon has a wonderful park system, and this park was the last acquisition under his direction. It was named for him in 1950, and he died in 1953. Nothing like honoring a person before he dies! There are numerous viewpoints and turnouts that are accessible when driving either north or south, but south is easier because of all right hand turns. The section of the Oregon Coast from Cape Blanco south to the OR/CA border is lined with sea stacks, or the Oregon Islands as they are named, and provide wonderful views. Once again photographs don’t do the views justice. We spent the night in the Harris Beach SRA about 8 miles north of CA. We had walked the beach and stayed for the sunset with a number of people. The sun had some very different light patterns as it settled into the mist of the Pacific Ocean. It went from a large orange ball to a mushroom cloud to a cylinder wider than tall (looked like the edge of a cheesecake) and finally settled beneath the horizon. Stupid me did not brought the camera so all is lost.

Thursday, September 11, 2008:
This morning it was 55 degrees and heavy fog. There was no wind and no sign that it would burn off quickly so we caught up with paperwork. We also had wifi, and I was able to publish last week’s blog. This area is called “The Banana Coast” and is generally warmer than the rest of the coast, but not today. For breakfast we had hot cereal and cocoa, making a dent in the cold. We finally left the campground just before noon, and the fog was still thick as pea soup. Driving south on US101, we filled with gas at the last Shell station before we crossed the border. We had been warned about the CA prices, and a few miles south of the border this was confirmed. CA as was $4.27/gallon as opposed to $3.87 in OR. We went to Crescent City CA to get information about the federal and state redwood parks. These parks are a joint effort of federal and state, and we were able to find great information. We were a bit concerned about the CA State Parks, but it seems there are plenty in the areas we are heading into. While in Crescent City, we visited the Battery Point Lighthouse, built in 1856; the ink hardly had time to dry on the CA Statehood documents. The lighthouse is accessible by foot only when the tide is out. We went out, hoping for a tour, but the Visitor Center was closed. We then decided take a walk out on the jetty that protected the harbor, but the numerous ‘warning’ and ‘hazardous to your health’ signs persuaded Susie that we shouldn’t do it. What interested me were the numerous doloes that had been used to reinforce the corner of the jetty. Each one weighs 42 tons and 20 of them have radio transmitters so that movement can be detected. One of the monitored ones has moved 11 feet, two others about 3 feet and another completely destroyed. We did walk out a fishing pier that was on the harbor side of the jetty to try to see the construction from a better angle but were still too far away. Next on the agenda was lunch, and through a stroke of luck we found what was probably the most popular and best restaurant in town. It was on the water in the harbor and had views of the lighthouse, fishing boats and US Coast Guard station. Both of us had fish and chips with the fish fresh from the ocean. We also bought clam chowder to go for dinner. We continued down the US101 into the Redwood National and State Parks, tried to take the Coastal Road, but RV’s were prohibited. We drove to the Klamath River Overlook, but when we found it, the fog was too thick to see anything. We drove by the town of Klamath, hoping to see some action as we were told that the salmon had returned. No such luck.
We then left US101 and took the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway through a forest of old growth trees, especially redwoods. The road has numerous twists and bends as it winds along avoiding the redwoods. We noticed several named groves of redwoods, but don’t know for whom or why they were named. On the right side of the Parkway was the Murrelet State Wilderness Area with several trails to the interior. The Marble Murrelet is a bird that we learned about when in Olympic NP in WA. It is a water bird, but requires old growth trees to breed. It may nest 30-40 miles inland, but flies to the ocean to provide food for its young. We entered the Prairie Creek Visitor Center but it was closed. We continued to the Elk Meadow Campground, so named because elk come to this area during the evening.
Since it is mating season, the males are a bit testy, and we were warned o stay away, a long way away. Unfortunately we did see any, or did we hear any music from the males as we did in Rocky Mountain NP in Colorado when camping there with daughter Diana and husband Paul. As the sun set, the fog started to roll back in so who knows what tomorrow will bring. We worked hard on our blogs with the hope we can be done completely tonight so we can get an earlier start tomorrow than we did today.

Friday, September 12, 2008:
Once again it was heavy fog in the morning when I took Daisy for her walk. A pleasant surprise, we were able to see the ‘Roosevelt Elk’ (named after Teddy for his efforts in saving them) in the far end of the field. Just a brief history on Roosevelt Elk, which live only on the Pacific Coast in WA and OR. They were hunted almost to extinction in the late 1800’s due to the desire for meat and hides. The remaining few were in the area that is now the Redwood National and State Park. Through his efforts and some wealthy people, more habitat was purchased and added to the state parks and more stringent hunting regulations put in place. Now there are about 2,000 Roosevelt Elk, and their survival seems assured. The fog had lifted enough for us to move the RV to Visitor Center. At the Visitor Center, Susie talked to a ranger about the marble murrelet. The Ranger told us that they have nicknamed them ‘the flying potato’ because of the body size and flying technique. We moved on to the Big Tree Wayside and took a hike of 3 miles through the magnificent trees. The Big Tree is 287 feet tall and a diameter of 23.7 feet. It is impossible to take a picture of the full tree, but if you stand in the parking lot, you can see the top. To walk through these magnificent trees is an experience everyone should have.
There was a story of a homesteader in the late 1880’s who wanted to cut down a very large redwood and use the base as a dance floor. Other people in the area stopped him. The redwood and sequoia trees are of the same family. Neither species has a taproot, but rely on a large growth of roots that are close to the ground surface and spread a great distance from the tree for stability. If it rains too much, softening the ground, and a large storm comes throw, both are liable to fall. The major difference between the redwoods and sequoias is the growth pattern. Redwoods grow tall, but the sequoias grow to a certain height and then the trunk diameter increases. So for trees of an equal height, the sequoias provide much more wood. But since they are mostly protected, it is a mute point. We left these wonderful trees and headed south after having lunch. We passed a dozen cars pulled off to the side of the road to take pictures of elk. Some of the people seemed too close, given our experiences over the last few years. We continued south, and as we approached the ocean the fog came back. We then turned east on CA299 and headed towards Redding. It wasn’t too long before we realized that the temperatures had risen from the mid-50’s to the lower 90’s. We had planned to stay in a USFS Campground, but it was too hot. We passed through the Coastal Range, where forest fires were very active this year. Most seem under control, but it sure was ugly. We pulled into a campground in Weaverville where there was electricity and thus air conditioning. The owner said that he has had almost no business this summer due to the forest fires and smoke. Tomorrow we head further east to Lassen Volcanic Park.

Saturday, September 13, 2008:
Daisy and I took our walk at 7:15am, and I noticed a slight smell of smoke and the sign at the high school entrance that said 54 degrees. We had breakfast and left the RV Park at 10:00am, noticing that the temperature had risen to 80 degrees. I am sure it was well into the 90’s before the day was done. Driving east on CA299, we stopped at the Ranger Station, but it was closed and then through the town of Weaverville. As we exited the town Susie spotted Susie’s Café and Bakery so we turned around to get some goodies for the drive plus something for tomorrow morning. We continued on towards Redding stopping to visit the Shasta State Historical Park. Shasta was a boomtown during the gold rush, but lost its glory when the county seat was moved to the town of Redding in the 1870’s. The town has had the distinction of being burned to the ground 3 or four times depending who is doing the counting. There is agreement that it burned in 1852, rebuilt and burned again in 1853. After this fire, it was decided that the main street should be widened to establish a fire break, all buildings be built of brick with steel shutters and roof construction sandwich of tin sheets, overlaid with dirt or sand and finally covered again with tin sheets. Obviously it was not enough as the town burned to the ground again in 1878. There was another fire in 1968, but while it took an historic building, it didn’t take the whole town. This year, there was a forest fire that started in late June and was brought under control in late July. All the artifacts and records were removed on July 9-10. The fire never was closer than a mile, but the way those fires move that was not much of a safety gap. The Museum reopened in early August. Included in the Museum was the town jail and photos of robbers who were hung by local vigilantes. There was also a rebuilt General Store and Bakery that uses a wood fired oven with a cooking surface of about 9 feet by 9 feet. It was not in operation because of the summer heat. We kidded the employee for not being as tough as the early bakers, and he concurred without hesitation. We stayed at the Museum for about 2 hours before pushing on to Redding to restock the food shelves. By the time we were done it was really hot, and we were glad we had turned on the generator so that Daisy could have some AC. Off to the east again on towards Lassen Volcanic National Park. We arrived at the Loomis Museum at the northwest corner of the Park at 4:30pm and had a half-hour to review the exhibits. The most spectacular exhibit were 6 photographs taken by Mr. Loomis on June 14, 1914 that had be enlarged to a 6 feet wide by 10 feet tall. The photographs were taken over a 20 minute period as Lassen Peak belched gas and ash in a violent eruption. After that the volcano settled down, only to erupt again with much more violence on May 19, 1915 with a pyroelastic flow on May 22, 1915. Had Mr. Loomis been at the same point as he was a year earlier, he would not have survived. The mountain finally settled down in 1917. There are still active fumaroles, paint pots, etc. to remind us that the volcano is subdued but not inactive. From the Loomis Museum we went to the Manzanita Campground, which will be our home for the next 2 nights. We are going to try to take 2 hikes tomorrow, but neither of them is to the top of Lassen Peak at 10,457 feet. We did meet 2 teenagers who had just done the hike and they really enjoyed the view but said that breathing was much more difficult than they expected. These young ladies adrenalin was really pumping as they talked to Susie. We had dinner and a shower and prepared to prepare for tomorrow. We have about an hour drive to the site of the first hike. There is a full moon, and the sky is absolutely clear. The high temperature for the day in the Park was 81 degrees, and the same is expected for tomorrow. Much better than the mid-90’s!

Sunday, September 14, 2008:
Another beautiful morning; not a cloud in the sky. The low temperature for the night was 47 degrees. We left the campground at 8:15am and drove south on CA89 towards the southwest entrance to Park. A few miles into the drive south we passed areas covered with angular rock of a size that would fit in a box with 9-inch sides. Not much was growing, and we suspected the rock was from the 1915 eruption (turned out to have been from an event 300 years earlier). As we drove further south, there was volcanic dust, and the vegetation was more prolific. Out of curiosity, we stopped at the Lassen Peak Trailhead (elevation 8,500 feet) for the climb to the top of Lassen Peak (elev 10,457 feet) by means of a trail that was 5 miles long. Looking up at the trail it seemed very steep, and I am glad we were not trying it. We saw some people on the peak, but no one climbing. We pulled into the Bumpass Hell parking lot to have breakfast, but I was diverted by some of the other campers so breakfast was not as quick as it should have been. We had breakfast and headed up the trail, reached the high point and heard a roaring as if there was an airport nearby. We continued down into a thermal basin with bubbling mud pots, steam roaring from openings in the ground, etc, This thermal basin is the only relief vent for the still active magma chamber under this area.



The largest and most powerful fumarole is named the ‘Big Boiler’ and can eject superheated steam at a temperature of 310 degrees. It was this fumarole that was making the roaring sound. Like Yellowstone, the crust around these fumaroles looks hard, but it is often just a thin crust and if you walk on it you will fall through and be terribly burned or killed. Now a word about Bumpass. This is not a typo for there really was a person by that name. He fell into the superheated water and mud in this thermal basin while trying to convince his partner that there was gold in the mud pots. He lost his lower leg and thus the name Bumpass Hell. The ‘gold’ was actually iron pyrite or ‘fool’s gold’, and we saw it floating in one of the mudpots. We returned to the RV after a 3-mile walk, drove north to a picnic area where we were overwhelmed by a busload of folks on a 2-week tour of 5 National Parks. We had a good time with them, and all was great until we started talking about Nevada and I gave my politically incorrect comment about constructing 15 nuclear reactors there. One lady couldn’t take a joke and walked away. She eventually came back. From lunch we drove to the Kings Creek Falls trailhead where we took another 3-mile walk, saw the King Creek Falls (about 70 feet in height) and then as we walked upstream we saw a series of cascades in the creek. We continued north and took our final and easy interpretative walk through the area of devastation from the 1915 eruption. There were several information plaques, but the most fun where the two showing photographs taken three days after the eruption. In the photographs were some very large rocks with the words ’Hot Rocks’ painted on them. They were still hot from the eruption. There was a display with two rocks that were 27,000 years old and three rocks that were 93 years old (formed in 1915). Back to the campground, but stopping once to take a photo of the north side of Lassen Peak. The campground was very quiet and a notice had been placed on the Bulletin Board stating that the water was being shut off tomorrow, except for one source a half mile away. No toilets, no hot showers, no way to run a National Park. Tomorrow we head back towards the coast where we hope to find less fog. We have been told that the coast fog is caused by the interior of the state being very hot and drawing the moisture off the ocean. We have planned to stop at 2 special places as we travel west and will probably stay in the same Weaverville RV Park as we did a few days ago.

Monday, September 15, 2008:
Another great morning, and we packed up and left the Lassen Volcanic NP with a wistful glace in the rear view mirror. We headed to the Turtle Bay Exploration Park, arriving at 9:45am in an attempt to beat the heat (we didn’t). Most of the exhibits are outside and while the locals might not mind 95 degrees (it’s the humidity, stupid!) it did get to me. This facility is a mixture of different exhibits: butterflies, birds, fish, planted gardens. The gardens are named after different parts of the world, such as the Chilean Garden, California Garden, etc. and are planted with material from those areas. Graphic panels also show that while a plant may be in the Chilean Garden it also is grown in other areas. There was a sign near the gate that read “Caution, cougar sighted in this area”. I asked the attendant and he said the sign was still up from yesterday when they had to close the garden when the cougar was sighted. This park is very close to town. Also we noticed that on both sides of the gardens there were signs of a recent fire. We asked one of the employees, and she said that 2 weeks ago a brush fire came from the north, jumped the gardens and was stopped by the Sacramento River. The employees used the gardens irrigation systems to keep the plants wet and that saved them. The Sundial Bridge, a pedestrian and bicycle bridge designed by a Spanish architect, crosses the Sacramento River and connects the main museums and the gardens. At the north end there is a tall steel tower with a low wall behind that has the location of the sun’s shadow at various times of the day on June 21, the summer equinox. This bridge was constructed to be part of the trail along the Sacramento River, rather for the Exploration Park, but it serves both well. The townspeople are very proud of the bridge, and it certainly is unique. We had left Daisy in the RV, and when we returned Susie took her to stand under an evaporative water-cooling system along the sidewalk. It took Daisy a minute or so to realize she was getting damp. We found a Jiffy Lube and had the oil changed before heading to Weaverville where we entered the RV Park and plugged in to the electricity for AC. We walked a few blocks to town and had a good dinner to end the day. The main activity for tomorrow is to get to the coast where the high temperature is expected to be 60 degrees, a change of the high 90’s of today.