Joshua Tree National Park Part Two

Well this was meant to be a one post blog but it got too big, hence part two. Part one should be below (if you are interested in sequential, start below). To the left is a nice Joshua Tree specimen, of course there are tons of these guys in the park along with many Yuccas.

So here are a few more pics. We named this next rock "breaching whale".

This guy, of course, we named "hook nose" rock.

These are real indian petroglyphs, the only ones available to the public (apparently there are a few more in the park but their location is protected).

On the trail.

There is plenty of color in the desert, even in the fall.

"Jumping" Cholla, I love this stuff, but watch out!

Joshua Tree National Park Oct '08

Hello everyone, I originally started this to share some of the geology of Joshua with Stacy Wise, but now it has become a potpourri of pictures, hopefully representing our camping trip here. The park is huge, over 750,000 acres and so much to do. We were busy most of our 6 days but just barely scratched the surface of places to visit and thing to do and see. Good news is that it certainly makes us anxious to return! We visited Oct 8 thru 14. It was 91 degrees when we arrived, but very dry and believe it or not comfortable. Half way thru our visit the weather changed dramatically and became windy and cold (38 degrees in the am, high of 68 to 75). Completely dry camping, but only $10/day, $5 with Golden age pass! We loved it immensely. Great beauty, isolation, incredible stars, unique like you can't believe, clean air, and so tremendously interesting. Quick note on RV camping. A big 5th wheel, over 28', has only a few places to go. Most sites in the park interior are designed for very small rigs or mostly tents. The book says you can get into Ryan CG, forget that, Jumbo Rocks can work, we loved and were comfortable in Belle (but only 18 sites, 10 for rigs over 30'). Do not arrive on the week end, all sites are first come first served. Our site was at 3900', most of the park is between 3 to 4500', high desert.

O.K., mostly pictures from here out. Here is our camp site at Belle CG

Me thinks maybe this one could make the NuWa owners front page (humble as I be, maybe, Gary, buddy?)

So now some end of the day photos right from our camp site.

This from our "front porch", the moon, the setting sun's golden hue and a Red Tailed hawk, how good does it get?!

We missed some of the famous, fabulous sunsets that folks see here, but these were pretty "acceptable".

One of the critters that hung around us was a Loggerhead Shrike. A desert bird, we saw a couple of these guys, but one in particular seemed to claim our spot. Truth be known it was definitely his spot. These guys are very territorial. We have those reflective sun shield windows that in the day time are almost perfect mirrors. Well this little devil saw his reflection in our windows, pure as day, and decided he had an invader in HIS territory. Yikes, this dude squawked, ranted, screamed and caused all sorts of ruckus. Then he started to attack this invader--- ouchy, almost broke our windows! And persistent, I don't think he quit until we left and pulled out, exiting the mystical intruder!

And that is my truck the little dude is sitting on, at least he respected that piece of our property!

Then speaking of critters, no respectable desert could be without a few lizards, Roxy's favorite quest (she didn't see this one - I called him "Lenny").

More adventures:

This is a real healthy live Oak in the middle of the desert.

I hope you can right click on this picture of an engraved sign post and select "open link" and then read the sign. It is about the "Desert Queen Mine". Quite a history, lots of mining history around here. Below is a pic of what is left of the mine, with tailings and closed off shaft in view.

Discovered this old indian house on my return hike from the mine. No idea on vintage or anything but sure thought it was cool. The entrance opening, front door I guess, is only about 3' tall; can't figure that out either.

This is "Queen Valley" road. We took a similar road to Desert Queen mine. Note that this is a two way road.

O.K. "Dikes" were a new thing to me. Again right click on the sign picture and select open link to read the sign. Short version, Dikes are more solid rocks embedded in the granite and erode at a much slower rate. These were seen on the trail to Arch Rock.

It was a little windy this day, hence hat holding.

Arch Rock (bet you already figured that out, huh?)

This place outside of a Rock climbers paradise (fun to watch those guys) is a geologist's paradise. There is an 18 mile, self guided, Geology Road tour you can drive, books at the visitor center, ranger tours, etc. Very wonderful place to visit. We will be back for sure.

Klamath, Ca / Garberville / Westport

Tuesday July 22 we leave lovely Lake Selmac and head for Klamath, California. We followed highway 199 to the Oregon/California border. Shelle and I both had a remorseful emotional pang as we crossed back into California. We were leaving Oregon where we had had so very much fun and the border crossing also underlined the fact that we were on the downhill side of our trip. Oregon was really fantastic; we will go back and hopefully spend more time. But we still have adventures ahead and plenty of camping.

The California border check was quick; basically they were looking for cherries, which we had eaten by now. When I was a little kid my folks bought me some cherries in Washington and the Canadians took them away from me! I’ve never gotten over it. I told my story to the California border agent and asked her if she could get my cherries back.

Highway 199 is a very pretty and interesting drive. It is all country and woods and mostly follows the Smith River down to Crescent City. It is twisty and windy and I did notice some white on Shelle’s knuckles a couple of times, but a nice slow passage got us safely through. With some open road helping get our MPH up a little we averaged 38 mph on this leg.

We have been in plenty of sun and nice warm weather so we weren’t pleased to see Crescent City socked in with fog. We were told that this is the norm for this part of the coast, which by the way is one of the reasons the redwoods survive so well here. And we did drive through several splendid groves of Redwoods. We picked up highway 101 in Crescent City and drove south. I just can’t ever say enough about redwoods, just one of God’s magnificent creations. It is just special to be near one.

We stayed at the Klamath River RV resort, a Coast to Coast park. Nice place right on the river. We get excellent camp ground prices at Coast to Coast facilities but this one has chosen to tack on some sur charges. We payed a $3 electric sur charge per day, but we couldn’t use electric heaters! (We might have used ours anyway, maybe, what's your guess?). There was a $5 per day fee to park water front, $10 charge if you wanted to wash your rig, etc. Wifi, of course, was not free. Anyway, it is a decent park and we enjoyed our time there. We were parked on a nice grass field right next to the forest. They had cut trails through the forest so you could walk your dog. The forest is thick and usually dark. One night I was walking Roxy and Shelle had hid in the bushes and came leaping out when we approached. My heart did skip at least one beat, pretty funny, but God got even with Shelle, she had hid in some nettles--- ooh, how does that feel!

The Rox and the Shell enjoying the view of the Klamath River from camp.

Klamath River from camp.

Klamath River flowers (you know I'm gonna sneak some flowers in). These are also know, to Shelle and Mur, as "Yellowies".

One of our adventures here was a trip to Fern Canyon in the Prairie Creek Redwood State Park, 10 or 15 miles south of Klamath. You drive through the park, more wonderful redwoods and then come to an off road road leading to Fern Canyon. On the drive we passed a large open field and bingo, there were several elks out feeding. Wow, are these magnificent and impressive animals!

Was I stoked to see this dude! What a creature.

Fern Canyon was featured on Huell Howser’s California Gold show. I remember being impressed and wishing I could go there someday (I wasn’t even sure where “there’ was). Here I am. But to get there requires another road adventure. This time it is 8 miles of dusty, windy, narrow, sometimes wahsboardy, dirt road. Including, I might add, 3 river fordings. Peter with his nice hopped up Mini Cooper had to turn back, but trusty old “Truck” came through once again. You drive to a deserted beach, park and then a short easy hike up to the canyon. It is a steep walled canyon completely drenched with ferns. I’ve seen the Fern Grotto in Hawaii, I’ve seen ferns in the forest, this is something else to see. You can walk up the canyon quite a ways, then climb out and walk back along the ridge.

Another one of these situations where pictures can't do it justice, especially small pictures, but you can get the idea.














You just had to be there! So, so lush, I guess the word verdant really fits. Delovely.

As we walked along the ridge of the canyon, we passed a mountain meadow, small meadow, carpeted in tall grass and bingo; again there were two magnificent bull elk. The meadow, as many are, was very boggy. I braved dirty squishy shoes to get a nice picture or two of those wonderful big boys.

Here is one of the trails that we followed after we hiked out of the canyon, on our way to discover another great elk!

Ah, here is the big boy! What a magnificent spectacle. (And if you are wondering, I had a telephoto lens, but not that big - 200mm - and I was close, and for the record, I was, let's say alert!)

Friday we moved on to Redway/Garberville to a place called Dean Creek Resort (are you getting this resort thing!). Dean Creek Resort is a nice old camp on the Eel River (which is very dry this year). We had chosen this place because one of Barbara’s daughters, Sheryl, lives very close in Benbow. Apparently the norm is for the river to have a fair amount of water, but this year they did not get much water so not only is the river low but it has a lot of algae and swimming is not advised, especially for dogs. Poor Rox, no swimming this stop.

Saturday our adventure was to explore a place called Shelter Cove, just west of Garberville. When they built 101 they decided to skip this area of the coast, deeming it too rough and rugged to deal with. Consequentially Shelter cove is a very isolated community. There is only one road in and it is not the world’s greatest road (here we go again on another twisty/windy!) 23 miles took us just about an hour to cover. At lunch we were chatting with some biker folks on Harley’s and even they were complaining about the road. There actually is a camp ground in Shelter Cove and some folks bring in medium sized rigs --- not me!

Our first stop was Black Sand Beach, a long expansive, unspoiled, black beach. What a vista. After soaking in the view we hiked down to the beach. The black sand is really not sand but more of a gravel mixed with stones. What a neat place this is and the beach is almost empty. We wished we had a chair and a good book; we could easily spend the day here just soaking it up.

Black Sand Beach vista

The black sand/gravel. They say this beach can change its height by 20' when the winter storms move all the sand off the beach, which then comes back in the summer.

Sheryl showed up with her two dogs, Ozzie, a 125# mix (Roxy was cautious with him!) and Nellie a Border collie mix. The three dogs had a blast.

Roxy and Ozzie meet for the first time.

The "kids" having fun

More of the little cove on Black Beach.

We hiked back to the truck and then just toured around the area. For being so remote it was amazing to see so many houses, although many were for sale. Apparently people buy here and then after a while realize it might be just a little more remote than they thought. Still it is a neat town.

We found a store/deli that had great fish and chips which we ate outside in the sun and the salt air. It made for a very enjoyable lunch.

This is the Cape Mendocino Light. Cape Mendocino is about 35 miles north. This light was commissioned in 1868 and worked for a long time until it was abandoned and forgotten. In 1997 a coalition group gained the rights to the light which had become very deteriorated. They laboriously refurbished it and had it flown, piece by piece, to Shelter Cove where it stands today. It is not an operating light, but an enjoyable light to see and tour.

On Sunday we went to Sheryl’s place in the country and had an enjoyable, relaxing Sunday brunch and picked wild blackberries (later to be consumed with French Vanilla ice cream-yummy).

Monday the 28th we were off to Westport. We drive down 101 to Legget and then grab the 1 to the coast. We had been warned about this stretch of highway, definitely another major T & W (twisty and windy). There are some major, sharp hairpins. Peter was behind me and said that on one hairpin our bikes on the back were less than 4” from the road and on a couple of turns the rig was equally close to scrapping the mountain side. And just to keep things interesting they toss in these big lumber trucks that come barreling, hell bent for election, down the road and they don’t slow down. And they don’t honor the center line either. At one point I had to hug the mountain, best I could, and just stop – I can’t remember if I kept my eyes open or not! You get a real workout cranking the wheel first hard left, then immediately hard right and so on. We were down to 10 mph, sometimes 5 mph and even 0, but it is a pretty drive and the coast is a just reward. The bad part is maybe 20 to 25 miles and once it is over you are on this wonderful, pristine coast with virtually no traffic.

The little town of Westport was once a booming lumber town, the largest city between San Francisco and Eureka. It was only available by boat up until 1930 but did a large business through shipping. Nearby was the town of Union, no longer there, and the two towns shared the bluffs between them to load and unload ships. Those bluffs are now the Westport Union Landing State Park. Our camp sites were right on the bluff overlooking the ocean and miles of coast. Every window in our rig had a knock down fantastic vista. If they shot a commercial here for an RV you wouldn’t believe it was real. And to top it off, the melodic ocean sang for us all day. And all this for $13 a day! It is “dry” camping, no hook ups but we were well prepared for that.
We did have some fog and overcast when we arrived but it did clear up for us. We ended up cutting a day out of our next stop and spending it happily here. This definitely is one of our top three stops.

Down the Westport Coast, right in front of camp.

Shelle and Roxy enjoying the sun and the view.

Roxy on "our" beach at Westport, off to get another stick.

I got it!

I'm not really a Sea Gull fan, in fact I don't really like them (despite the fact they keep the ocean clean, they squawk, poop, and beg) but I couldn't resist this guy.

Beach flora. "Reddies" above, not sure if these others are "Bluies" or "Purplies".



First night sunset. It was still a little cool the first night, following nights were much milder.

Fort Bragg (California) is about 12 miles south from camp and worth exploring. They have a beach here called Glass Beach. Years ago trash was dumped in a cove and all the bottles were washed out to sea, ground up and turned into sand. The ground glass pieces make up the sand of the beach and are considered collectibles. Folks use them in decorative arrangements and such so we decided to collect some. The main beach is pretty well picked over but Sheryl had told us of a less trafficked beach and we got plenty of glass.

This is the glass "sand", 80% of what you see is glass.

A little closer look. And you can dig down about a foot and it remains like this. Pretty amazing.

Topping off our day was a great sunset and nice camp fire with roasted marshmallows. About as good as it gets!

Westport was our last real major adventure. Most of the rest of the trip was just working our way home. We stayed one night in Ukiah (very hot), two nights in Isleton on the Sacramento Delta area, then overnight in Visalia (very, very hot). Peter and Bev and Joe and Barbara left us in Visalia and we headed to Bakersfield for our final stop. We love the campground in Bakersfield, Orange Grove RV, which is in the middle of an orange orchard. Nice amenities, nice pool, pull throughs, good place to get ready for the Grapevine and L.A. traffic.

We have put over 3000 miles on the trailer and over 4300 miles on the truck. We have for the most part been very fortunate with the weather, extremely fortunate to have had such good traveling companions, and feel very blessed that we could have this wonderful adventure. We are definitely ready for the next adventures.