DuEtte - Pebble Beach & Beyond

A lovely day of driving down the coast! We were in and out of the fog with beautiful patches of sunshine and lots of road construction. It makes you wonder how they can just keep rebuilding the road over and over again. In any event, we’ve settled in for the night at another Harvest Host golf course. These have become very convenient and just so easy. N thinks we may be home tomorrow!?! 

Mendocino County Library - check! That was the highlight of the day, besides finding a campground for the night, on the Friday of a holiday weekend! We’ve learned (or we’ve just been very fortunate) that even if a campground has a sign that says ‘Full,’ if we ask nicely, they can usually find a spot for us. Tonight, we may have stumbled on our best spot yet. We are actually at a campground at the mouth of a river that runs to the ocean under highway 1 which is on a large suspension overpass. The campground where all of the RVs are does appear to be full. However, there is an overflow spot that is right on the river’s edge towards the back of the campground. We are the only RV here so it feels like our own personal campground! The view from our window:  

Delayed post (sometimes, the Internet connection is the biggest challenge of camping)… We visited Whiskeytown National Recreation Area today. Unfortunately, we are also back into extreme smoke areas. Today’s smoke was from the Del Norte fire near the Oregon border. We’re sure that we went through some beautiful areas, but we just couldn’t see them. There is rain in the forecast, so, hopefully that will address the fires and the smoke. But, being back in California also means - Library Card time! I had a bit of a bonanza today with Shasta, Trinity, and Humboldt counties. Being back in Humboldt Country means we had a chance to really visit my old stomping grounds - Cal Poly Humboldt. A lot looked the same, but a lot looked different as well. Now, we are camped at the edge of the bay watching the weather dance on the horizon…

Delayed post… Well, we are back in California again! That seems to be progress on our way back home!! Today we discovered a new National Monument that we didn’t even know about - Tule Lake National Monument. This is another place whose claim to fame is as a Japanese Internment Camp, the largest as it turns out. On a brighter note, we also visited the Lava Beds National Monument. This has the largest collection (over 1,000) of lava tube caves (created by flows of lava underground that cooled and formed tube caves!). We are settled in for the night at another Harvest Host golf course location. It is a beautiful setting with only one other RVer here for the night…

Start of the road home! First stop was to the Oregon State Capitol in Salem. A beautiful Art Deco building that is, unfortunately, undergoing extensive seismic retrofitting. So, the dome (with a pioneer wielding an ax as its figurehead) and chambers are not accessible, but still nice to see the grounds and the building from the outside. Afterwards, we meandered down the Oregon Covered Bridge Trail which is also known as the Over the Rivers and Through the Woods Byway. Very scenic with multiple lakes and streams to follow. We are staying in Sisters, OR which is a very cute town known for its skiing and folk festival.

Today was definitely a rest and recover day! The weather is starting to turn a little cooler. Mostly overcast today and only up to the high 70’s. We are starting to think about our route home. It is time to think about the real world again and the chores we need to address. But, it is not likely that our route will be the quickest or the most direct…