TWOLOST: Northern California Trip Report

[twolost]

Ed,

My primary camera is a Canon EOS 1d MKII (8mp). I used a Canon 400mm F2.8 L lens with 2x adapter to get shots of the Heron. For the stuff that is not so far away my wife and I both use our Canon PowerShot SD750 pocket cameras (7.1mp).

Thanks,
---TWOLOST---

[twolost]

Date: April, 12

Notes:
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Plan for the day was to travel north on Kings Peak Road, then take a side trip on the King Range Road, jump back on Kings Range Road, then at the intersection with Mattole Road, drive north into Ferndale and onto Eureka - where we had planned to stay at an RV park for the evening.




Sunrise from the third floor balcony of the Ocean Front Inn:






When we woke up in the morning in our hotel room we noticed a dozen or so folks outside getting ready to go snorkeling at low tide. Turns out they were all after Abalone. The picture below shows two Abalone, each the size of your hand spread out as far as it will go (finger tip to finger tip). These Abalone were for private use only as it would be illegal to sell them commercially (or so I was told). There was a lot of effort (relatively speaking) to harvest these vrs simply making pancakes for breakfast. I have never eaten Abalone, but after watching these folks brave the frigid waters to pry these guys off of the rocks… there is obviously something I am missing.



Abalone





Kings Peak Road was passable for the most part, except for one section that was in the shadow of the surrounding trees. Here it had remained very wet and was six plus inches deep in gooey clay. At one point, I had our van clawing through a short downhill section in 4x4 low at a about a mile an hour, totally perpendicular to the direction of the road. I was pretty sure that not too far down this road would either be a more suitable place to turn around or the road would have been a little less mucky and we could continue on. Luckily, I was right. Had I been wrong, I would still be there today trying to turn around and get back up this clay ridden hill. Once we passed this 200 yard downhill mudder section the road surface was just fine for the remainder of our route.



Kings Peak Road (before the clay/mud started getting deep):



King Range Road (blocked)



More Kings Peak Road:



King Range Road (approached from other side)



Switchbacks along Kings Peak Road (south of Mattole Road):



Views along Mattole Road:










Shoreline RV Park, Eureka, CA:

[BC]

good stuff as always TwoLost, love ths shots on Usal Road and looks promising, adding to my list next time down south

[daveb]

Great report twolost...I'm waiting for more. I was just there in October but your shots show the area so much more greener and it looked strange to see water in the steam at Usal beach.
Keep it coming. Really makes me want to go back.
DaveB

[twolost]

Date: April, 13

Notes:
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Plan for the day was to go out looking for Bigfoot. My plan was to troll along the section of Hwy 96 from Willow Creek to Happy Camp (a section of highway know as the Bigfoot Scenic Byway). There were more reported Bigfoot sightings here than anywhere else for a time. Also, Bluff Creek (think of the famous/infamous Patterson-Gimlin film) crossed this stretch of highway. We tried to drive up Bluff Creek Road, but this road was closed for the season. Unfortunately, we did not witness any Bigfoot activity during our visit nor did we capture any grainy, noisy, non-discernable movement in the forests that lined the highway that we could pass off as legitimate Bigfoot evidence. We even missed out on the trademark footprints (like those I used to make as a kid with my homemade plywood platforms I had nailed to my tennis shoes) while scouting off highway. Dang. Looks like I have to return to my day job after all. We turned around before reaching Happy Camp in order to make it back to our beach destination for the evening (Gold Bluffs Beach State Park). The area along Hwy 96 was spectacular and is another one of those must do on two wheels twisted roads. If I was a Bigfoot, I would live there for sure.



Hwy 299 (on the way to Hwy 96 and Willow Creek).




Entering - Six Rivers National Forest:




Bluff Creek Road (closed for the season):




Red clay banks of Hwy 169:




Dolason Prairie:





Gold Bluffs Beach State Park:

[twolost]

Date: April, 14

Notes:
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Plan for the day was to move further north, up to Crescent City and onto our overnight destination at Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park to camp amongst some of the areas giants.


Leaving Gold Bluffs Beach State Park:



Crescent Beach Overlook:






Crescent Beach (35+ mph sustained winds)




Crescent City:






Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park - Campground:

[twolost]

Date: April, 15

Notes:
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Next stop, home.

We knew this was going to be a long travel day (just over 500 total miles). This was by design as wanted to spend as much time in California as possible. Our plan was to head north on Hwy 199 until it intersected with I-5, then hammer down due north all of the way back to Washington State. Shortly after we got on the road, we did manage to stop at Stout Grove for one last encounter with some big trees just as the sun was coming up.


Stout Grove:






We made it home by 5:00pm.

This is definitely a trip that I would like to do again and I would highly recommend it, two wheels or four. The great thing about a Sportsmobile is that we were not restricted in any of the places we dared to travel. However, if you had a larger RV or were towing a trailer... you would have been denied in many of the places we ventured.

Some of the roads were very steep (paved and dirt alike). However, we never really needed 4-wheel drive to overcome any obstacles on this trip (with the one exception being the really gooey clay on Kings Peak Road). We also did not encounter any places where we used the full 4x4 package for ground clearance. That said, 4x4 plus the diesel plus the Brakeman brake upgrade made coming down these really long, steep, and narrow roads a piece of cake and really helped the confidence level of both the driver and passenger.

Trip was an astounding success (overall). We got a few items fixed/updated on our van while at Sportsmobile, we witnessed some amazing scenery, we encountered very few people during this time of year, most everything was a lush green, the sunshine followed us everywhere (nearly zero rain), and we made it back home safe and sound.

The only real problem I encountered during this trip happened sometime on the way home. I had my vans transmission serviced before I even started this trip. This service included dropping my original transmission oil, changing the oil filter, adding fresh AMSOIL ATF, and installing a Mag-Hytec transmission pan. Somewhere on the way home, my transmission started to leak (ok, more like run). I did not know this until I got home and noticed the back of the van was collecting red fluid. Looking under the van revealed that everything was soaked in transmission fluid. Most of the holes around the transmission pan bolts (to the rear of the van) were leaking. I will do some diagnostics and add my findings to the Mag-Hytec thread elsewhere on this forum.


Cheers,
---TWOLOST---

[twolost]

Coming sometime in September, 2009...









Cheers,

[Ed in Montana]

Congrats Three Lost!

The Stout Grove was utterly amazing, and you managed to take really good big tree photos. Photographing these giants simply is not easy, and you can rarely capture the shear size of these 300 foot plus trees. But you have in many of your pics.

[Ford_6L_E350]

Originally Posted by twolost

One last image to post for this trip (taken on Usal Beach).



Coming sometime in September, 2009...

Congratulations. Hope your addition is as nice as ours was.

Mike