Ride Report: None - Big travel day. Got one planned for tomorrow tho. Just hafta check back then if you're only reading the blog for the bike stuff...
Today's plan was to continue West on 299 through what appears by Google Maps to be a largely forested and mountainous area until we reach highway 101. Then we turn North and head to the "Honey Bear by the Sea" RV park just South of Ophir, OR. Seriously. Ya can't make these names up. We shall see how well that turns out. But there's lots to cover before then.
We got a good start on the day since we knew it would be a long one. Well, we had a good start for maybe the first half hour. Then we spent a half hour sitting here...
Yup - road construction. As best I could tell CDOT was scaling the side of the big hill in front of us. It shows up as the tan smear in the center of the pic. Traffic was stopped from both directions while we waited for the back hoe to load two semis. Then we got to go. The poor saps on the other side had to wait for the three that showed up as we were leaving to get loaded before they could come thru.
We spent a good bit of time in the Six Rivers National Forest. It was beautiful. Made for slow going driving The Rig up and down. By slow, I mean that we spent two hours to make 64 miles. that's slow by Granny standards!
We followed this river for a good while. There were some amazing views. My apologies to the reader, but I neglected to note the name of the river. There were a number of rafting companies along the way. The terrain was quite rugged. Steve from the RV Park last nite told us that this area is where Bigfoot was first sighted. And sure enough...
There he was just standing around at a "Patriot" gas station waiting for tourists to take pics with him. He tried to hit me up for enough cash to buy some food and claimed to be a veteran. All good fun, but then I happened upon the following...
The reader should be aware that I didn't go looking for this, and that until today I was a Bigfoot agnostic. But we were driving along minding our own business on the edge of one of the small towns along 299 when I was taking a pic of something interesting beside the road. When I later looked at the pic, I thought I saw something. So I blew it up for a closer look and.....THIS! AMAZING! BIGFOOT IS REAL!!!!!!!!!! I know, I know - its grainy and was taken from a distance. But none-the-less, there he is. It took several miles before I was able to get my breathing under control. Once you actually see it - you BELIEVE! Wow!
Then, just a little further down the road there was this...
Some bonehead shot one of his relatives and turned him into burgers! A national treasure - gone! I wonder what they taste like?
It looked kinda like this. But we weren't out of California yet.
Before we left the state was passed thru one last mountainous area and drove right thru these...
That's right. Coastal Redwoods. For maybe (?) 5-10 miles a guy couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a Coastal Redwood. Susan took so many pics I think she got tendonitis in her shutter finger...
These things are huge. Not as beefy as the Giant Sequoias, but impressive in their own right.
I told ya she took a lot of pics...
She included the mirror in this pic just so the reader would have a sense of scale. It was right beside the road. Note: All redwood pics used with permission of Susan Schoen photography, LLC.
They remain proud of dead Redwoods even this far up North. The reader will recall the "Fallen Monarch" from an earlier blog. As proof I proffer this pic - tho this one remains nameless. A section of redwood cut from a log dug up when doing some sort of construction just North of Orick, CA. This according to the plaque affixed to the slab of tree, which also says it was over 1,000 years old. This assumes that the person who aged the slab wasn't the bulldoze operator who also happened to dig it up... A friendly local took the pic for us as were stopped in the parking lot of a local Mexican restaurant to dine in The Rig. This isn't as bad as it sounds. The restaurant was closed a lot lately because Mary had gotten sick. Bonus Internet Points are in play again for the reader who can first determine how I know this. The winner will be announced in a later post...
As we neared Oregon, I had been lecturing Susan to be sure and take a pic of the obligatory "Entering Oregon" sign when it came. We had also decided to trade driving duties some time after Crescent City, CA. so I just chose some random wide spot in the road and pulled over. At which point Susan suggested we get out for this pic...
If the reader has been keeping track, I believe this is state number seven.
BTW - they also have plenty of elk here in Oregon. We saw signs regularly warning us of them crossing the road. Riddle - Why did the elk cross the road? answer - They didn't. They're too lazy to bother and just nap under these two trees beside the highway.
But lest I paint too rosy a picture of Oregon - we went thru this section of 101. The observant reader will note the world's largest pothole in the road beside the new tarmac in the foreground. the pothole was created when the entire side of the mountain slid toward the ocean at some point in the recent past. The new tarmac is basically a detour thru the collapsed area. As an aside - I've no idea why the guy in the oncoming lane is driving off the road. Maybe he was trying to stay away from the remaining uphill side of the mountain fearing it would fall on him? Maybe just a bad driver? Hard to say.
But what Oregon lacks in roadbed stability, it makes up for in spades with coastal views....
It looked like this whenever 101 was close to the shore and the trees weren't in the way.
OK - I admit it. A coastal views are my equivalent of Susan's redwood pics. Just can't get enough of em.
Oh yes - and we saw a few of these. Not many in Kansas...
Which made this a difficult shot to get what with my risk averse bride and all...
I did manage to talk her into standing still long enough to get this pic. Then I heard carping about her cold foot all the way back to The Rig. It was worth it tho. I'll report in a future post as to whether her toes fell off from the cold as she feared. I mean really - look at the pic. Whose feet are both actually IN the water...
(Author's note: Susan is scowling at me. Something about the pic being taken just before the tsunami rolled over her foot. She apparently believes that's what all those tsunami signs were for.)
Till next time...
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