Nov 19-21

We left Gold Beach OR Wednesday morning for a planned short driving day leaving around 10am. Today’s destination was Eureka CA about 80 mile (150 km) south along the coast. Rain and drizzle had set in again so we just kept our thoughts toward California sunshine. Hmmm.

After a stop for supplies in Brookings and lunch at Carl Jrs. in Arcata, we made it to our next stop at the Eureka fairgrounds around 2:30. We had planned to bike to downtown Eureka on Thursday to check it out, but the rain continued, so plans changed so we ended up doing Kathy’s hair. No pictures this time as it was the same beautiful result. Thursday provided lots of time for planning the next 10 days or so, which we did and it is now set.

Friday we woke to a light drizzle and around 60 deg, so our plan was to drive to downtown Eureka and check it out before leaving which we did. Another ocean port with several large fishing vessels at the harbor. Their downtown has a lot of old and interesting architecture. One notable was the Carson Mansion. http://ingomar.org/index.html

Carson was actually born in New Brunswick and moved to northern California and began a lumber business and later became the area’s biggest lumber and gold baron. Carson City Nevada was named after him during the gold rush era.

It is now owned by a private club so it’s not open to the public, but if you like opulent home design and finishings, check out the above link. It is described as one of the most photographed homes in the US and possibly the world. Across from it is the “Pink Lady” built by Carson for his son as a wedding gift. It’s for sale, but we don’t know for how much. Some pic’s below.

We left Eureka heading for Ferndale CA, which was touted as a quaint little town from the Victorian era that has stood still for almost 150 years. We wondered around it for an hour or so checking out the shops then went to the Victorian Inn for a nice lunch. It certainly was a nice town with a lot of beautiful buildings. Their other claim to fame is that this is the hometown of Guy Fieri from the Food Network TV show Diner’s, Drive-ins and Dives. He was here in May checking out some of the local eateries. We know this as we went into one and bought a nice big “sticky buns” for something sweet later in the day. It was good!

We left Ferndale and headed down the road a few miles and arrived at the the Avenue of the Giants. This is a 31 mile scenic byway that runs somewhat parallel to Hwy 101 and lays claim to the “best forest drive in the world”. It is a tour through groves and groves of Giant Sequoia and Redwoods 250’ + in height and wide enough in some cases that you can drive a car through a carved out area in the tree.  We didn’t stop for these tourist traps and were sure there wasn’t any large enough for the RV anyway. So yes, I took a few pictures of trees, but it was a drizzly day so no hiking today. Besides, a couple of days earlier a couple had toured through another scenic byway, we think the same day as us and their car was broken into and they arrived back to the sound of gun shots and found the passenger window smashed and a purse stolen. It was on the local news. So we are cautious of these areas that are remote.

When in Eureka earlier in the day I overhead a few locals talking about the weather and said that it was going to rain 2-3 inches later that day. They were correct as once arriving to our site for the night, it rained hard all night. No cable at the park and the wi-fi was poor so we watched a few episodes of Breaking Bad and turned in early.

Squawk!!