Who would have thought that mornings in coastal Humboldt County would be foggy? Well it was. Hahaha! Slinky didn’t want to leave the van. She stayed inside covered by blankets. By temperature it wasn’t that cold, 52 degrees, but throw in the moisture and coming from Red Bluff, about 86 degrees when we left, and we felt cold as well. The Azalea Glen RV Park at Patrick’s Point was beautiful. Redwoods, azaleas and a pond with flowering lilies.
After coffee and showering we drove to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove of very large Coastal Redwood trees. We each took a lot of pictures on the 1.5 mile walk as the light was unique, the fog and sun kept switching places. Lots of ferns provided bright greenery, wild Rhododendrons popped up here and there and the bark was accentuated by this on again and off lighting. Check out our photos.
After the Lady Bird we took off for Oregon on Hwy 101. But we stopped at the Curly Redwood Hotel in Crescent City to look at the redwood burl (curly) paneling on the building. We didn‘t go inside any of the rooms but we’ve been told by a reliable source that inside a room there is more curly redwood. Interesting. Slinky didn’t move when we crossed the border into Oregon but we were excited because it meant cheaper gas. We filled our tank in Brookings.
We were on our way to Gold Beach to have dinner with Bill and Dee Mingus. Bill is Diane’s cousin. We checked into our campground at Quosatana, about 15 miles up the Rogue River, got our campsite, changed our cloths, left our beach chairs to show that our campsite was taken and went back into Gold Beach. We stopped at the Gold Beach Bookstore to look around. The bookstore was 2 stories and is well known. Diane bought a book and it was fun looking around.
And off we went to meet Bill and Dee. Bill and Dee were lots of fun. Bill let us know that Oregon is known for Pinot Noir wines. He ordered a bottle of Brandborg Pinot Noir and we were keen on tasting it. The wine was great and Bill proceeded to tell us that this wine is from the Umpqua Valley, Elkton to be exact, and his brother Bob was once involved with the Brandborg Winery. When he found out we were going from Gold Beach to the Crater Lake/Klamath Falls area he suggested that we drive up the coast to Reedsport take Hwy 38 east through Elkton and then Hwy 138 to Crater Lake it was scenic and we could visit the winery. After dinner we took the opportunity to show our van to Bill and Dee. The food was great, the conversation was fun and all-in-all it was a great evening.
Once back at the campground the first thing we noticed was our beach chairs were missing. We asked our closest neighbors if they saw anyone take them and they hadn’t. We were bummed and it put a damper on a great evening. About 30 minutes later, we were sipping wine as the sun went down and 2 boys, about 11-12 years old, road up to our campsite on bikes. They asked us if we had left 2 chairs at our site as we said yes they apologized that they had taken the chairs because they thought we accidently left them as we moved on. They rode back to their campsite and brought our chairs back. We thanked them for being honest and returning our chairs.  A good night’s sleep was had by all 3 of us.
FAB pics of the redwoods…and other things!!!