Again life has been pretty crazy. I
have had no time at all the last 2 weeks to type up a blog post. So I will be
doing this in 2 parts. When I last posted I was in Portland Oregon. I spent 3
days there fishing with no luck one day it started to rain so I had a chance to
drive around the city and check the place out. I spent the nights watching
movies on my computer
Saturday
Jan 25 I woke up in Brookings Oregon and found a free breakfast at a best western.
I also used the bathroom to shave and clean up a bit. From there I drove to
Crescent City CA, the northern end of the Red woods. I went to the visitor
center for some maps. As I was about to leave a girl standing near the desk
asked if I was heading south, which I was. She was a backpacker looking for a
ride through the forest to Arcata. I was glad for the company so I cleaned out
the car while she grabbed her things. She stayed at the inn next to the visitor
center and came back with one of the biggest backpacks I’ve ever seen. She
threw it in the in the back seat and we drove off. While driving and hiking
Madlen told me she was from Germany. Her family took a summer “holiday” to
Australia to see their uncle, who lives in Perth. When they were on the way
home she decided that she was going to stay in Australia. She finished high
school and was going to university there. She did the last semester as part of
an exchange program in Vancouver. This was her time between semesters and she
decided to backpack the west coast, alone, in winter. Madlen has been staying
wither friends along the upper west coast and did some couch surfing too. The
red woods were amazing; they will always be one of my favorite places to go.
There are few places I go where living things are this incredible. We hiked
until dark and then drove south. I told her about my trip so far and where I planned
on going. The next day I wanted to see the other redwood forest and continue
south from there. That was basically her idea also, so we split a hotel room
for the night. I have to note that this is the very first time I have ever
spent any money, other than a camp site, on a place to stay for the night. We
found a place in Eureka and I was the third person there from Wisconsin. The
guy behind the desk had to laugh.
Sunday
morning I was glad to see they had breakfast included. For once I had a guilt
free meal at a hotel. We then drove up to Arcata to see the town. Here they
have a huge bay with lots of marsh land you can walk through. Lots of birds
flying up down the coast stop here. Next we drove to the beach and hiked
through the sand dunes near the ocean. After that headed south to the Humboldt
Redwood State Park, and the Ave of the giants. This is an amazing drive weaving
through monster trees to the visitor center. Even the visitor center is cool
here. They have just about every animal in the park mounted for you to see.
Then we drove to the old growth forest, they take the bridges out in winter but
you can always walk across the fallen trees that lie across the river. We hiked
around the forest and came out on a road. We both thought the trail was longer
but the hike was really short. So we hiked back and just walked through the
woods for awhile. Next we stared the drive south; next stop was Robert
Yanasak’s place along the California coast. Madlen’s plan was to head down to
San Francisco, so we looked a few things up and found out there is a bus from
Fort Bragg, about 15 minutes from Robert’s. We were going to stay with Robert
for the night and I could take here to the bus in the morning. I let bob know I
was on the way and that I had one extra. He didn’t mind at all and we made it
to his house at about 8pm. During the drive I told Madlen a little about
Robert. The first thing I told her was that he was going to try to get her to
stay longer. We all sat around and talked for quite some time. Robert had a big
pot of chili simmering on the stove top, and it smelt delicious. Madlen is sort
of a vegetarian, she dose eat fish and isn’t that picky about how the food is
prepared. But the chili had beef in it so Robert cut up a big salad for
everyone. Robert criticized his cooking but I still loved that homemade chili. After
grabbing some things from the car I took a shower, with 2 showers in 2 days I
finally felt clean. We stayed up for awhile longer talking and catching up, and
sure enough Madlen decided to stay another day and plan things out from there.
The
next morning Madlen chopped up fruit for a fruit and yogurt salad and Robert
brought out some wonderful smoked cheese for breakfast. We all got a late start
to the day and hung out around the table for the morning. Robert, after hearing
what Madlen hoped the see in her time here, thought her and I should just
travel together. We both thought for a bit and decided to look into it. Then we
hiked through Roberts’s backyard down the state park along the ocean. His
backyard has a patch of woods that you walk though with several types of trees
along the way. The most surprising is eucalyptus, which you can smell just
about everywhere. Madlen was shocked to see the trees anywhere other than
Australia. Once through the trees you
come out to a few hundred yards of flowing sand dunes that lead right to the water’s
edge. The waves were crashing that day and we all took some really nice
pictures. As you look around you see some pretty tall, steep mountain area to
the north along the water. After some time at the beach we all headed back.
Robert took a nap while Madlen and I looked into traveling together. There were
several major things she wanted to see before leaving, San Fran, Yosemite,
Zion, Grand Canyon. All of these were places I have planned to see too, I just planned
on seeing a few more in between. Such as kings canyon, Sequoia, and Bryce
Canyon. Thanks to Google we were able to look everything up. Madlen has to be
at LAX on Feb. 7th for her 9pm flight. Once we figured everything
out we realized that this just might work. It would mean getting up early,
hiking all day, and driving late into the night every day until then. But I’m
always up for a slight challenge so we decided to go for it. 2 years ago when I
stayed with Robert I was rushed on time and only had the chance to spend one
day with him. So this time I wanted to spend a few days with him. Madlen and I
figured we could leave Wednesday morning and still have time for everything.
Once the planning was done it was nap time. Robert woke us up to let us know
that we were going to have dinner with his friend Gery. We all got ready and
drove into Fort Bragg to Gery's place. The house he is renting was pretty cool.
Walls and ceiling were all made from the red woods trees. He also had a
different, lighter wood for the floor. Gery dose this really cool art work. It
is very math and pattern related but he end up with these beautiful paintings. I’ve
always thought more along the lines of math so I really enjoyed seeing what he
was able to do. He made us a great dinner of spaghetti and salad. After dinner
he really explained how he goes about each of the paintings he makes. When we
got back to Robert’s, we watched a movie and then off to bed.
Tuesday
Jan 29 this morning I tried something new for breakfast. I’m going to call it
the bob special, brown sticky rice, 1 raw egg, roasted sesame seeds, and soy
sauce. Actually it was pretty tasty and really fills you up. Things in the back
of my truck always manage to get wet. And by now everything was pretty soaked.
So I pulled everything out and let it dry off. Madlen and I packed up all the
dirty laundry we had and Robert took us into Mendocino for the day. We walked
around the town, wondering into different shops and enjoying the sunny day.
Then we drove over by the water. Here there are large cliffs that lead down to
the water. Madlen and I climbed down a few and took some cool pictures of the
waves crashing. But it was incredibly windy and we didn’t stay long. After that we drove back up to Fort Bragg to
do the laundry. While we waited, we grabbed dinner next door at a Mexican
restaurant. Personally I don’t eat a lot of Mexican food, I hate onions and
that seems to be ingredient number one for them. Here we all got wet burritos,
which is a big burritos in a deeper dish swimming is a sauce. Hands down this
was the best Mexican food I’ve ever had. After eating we had to go back and dry
our cloths. As the sun was setting we drove to the ocean again to a spot called
glass beach. They used to dump the garbage off shore and slowly the warn down
glass from bottles washes up on the beach. We grabbed our laundry and drove
back to Roberts. Tonight the stars were incredible. We spent about an hour
standing outside in the back yard staring straight up. Robert had some great
stories to tell and he definitely knows how to keep someone interested. When we
made it back inside we had some tea and ice cream while we watched another
movie.
Wednesday
Jan 30 we had to be up and a reasonable time this morning. I had a big bowl of
chili for breakfast, I don’t know what it is about chili but it always tastes
better the second time. I have been complaining about my hair for the last few
days and desperately needed a haircut. Robert had the idea that he and Madlen
could just cut it. This turned out to mean that Madlen could cut it and Robert
could take pictures of the whole thing. This is also when Madlen said she cut
hair before, it happened to be a dogs hair but that didn’t seem to matter to
anyone else. After this was finished I loaded the car back up and Madlen and I
said our goodbyes to Robert. We took hwy 1 all along the coast the whole way
down to San Francisco. It takes longer but it is such a beautiful drive I
recommend it to anyone in the area. Along the way we stopped for gas. There was
a very interesting guy at the station; his first question was what my gas mileage
is. Then he asked how much I could fit in the back of my truck. This is when I
had to show him and tell him about my trip. He knew a ton about the area and
told us to head down to a certain beach and then to check out another bay along
the drive. So we walked along the beach for a while and watched the seals
playing in the rolls of the waves. We continued driving and saw a shockingly
fast sun set. It was too dark to check out the bay so we headed for the city.
Madlen knew a friend of a friend in Oakland so we went over to her place. Jessica
lived with her boyfriend and turned out to be really great hosts. Madlen and I
already ate but they had us try some of their dinner, cold beer in the fridge,
Jessica set out maps of the city for us, internet password, showed us how to
use the TV and showed us all the movies. If there was a grading scale for
random host she aced it. Madlen keeps a journal of her travels also and we both
had some catching up to do. I had to make fun of her, she carries around a lap
top and hand writes a journal. She said she honestly never thought about that.
Tuesday
we got us early. Jessica had some iced coffee all ready to go. Madlen and I
pack up and headed into the city. First we drove around the fishermen’s Warf
area. We stopped and walked around for awhile. Everything was still pretty much
closed and trucks were unloading the fish to the restaurants. We walked into a
huge nature gallery that had ton of pictures of the places we planned on going
to. Next drove over to a park that looked out at Alcatraz Island and the golden
gate bridge. Then I took a wrong turn and almost went over the bridge but we
ended up at a park right next to the bridge. After that we went down Lombard
st. From there it was off to Golden Gate Park. Here we walked around for most
of the day. You were supposed to pay to go into the Japanese tea garden but
Madlen had the idea to jump the fence. Same with the botanical gardens. The
next stop was the twin peaks for a beautiful over look of the city. For dinner
we went back to the Warf and found a strange seafood sandwich. It wasn’t what
either of us expected and we ended up getting another one at a different stand.
This one was perfect. Fresh fried fish with tons of mixed greens on top. That
was it for San Fran; we started the drive to Yosemite. About 30 min away we
pulled off at a RV parking area and using ground pads a sleeping bad turned the
back of the truck into a bed. This worked surprisingly well.
Again the pics are in the wrong order
No comments:
Post a Comment