What a Campground!!! (Not)

We have traveled the country quite a bit and stayed in all kinds of campground. We really don't need much other than full hookups and a little bit of room. We really don't look for campgrounds with swimming pools and all that other stuff, since we don't use their facilities normally.

When we left Klamath on Monday it was 57 degrees. It had been cool the whole week. When arriving at the Konocti Vista Casino Resort and Marina in Lakeport, CA it was 107 degrees and the "campground" is an asphalt parking lot with full hookups. We were barely able to fit the rig into the spot, never mind either one of our cars. Once we had opened the slides, we realized that the living room slide was in the next spot and we decided to park our cars in that spot to protect the slide from somebody accidentally hitting it when they pull in. The park was still pretty empty so we did not feel bad about taking up another spot and we got settled in.

The park was expensive for what (or not) they offered. There was no wifi and our air card was really slow. By Tuesday afternoon the park was starting to fill up and we had neighbors on both sides. It was time to look for another campground. We can't leave the area yet, since our mail is coming to Lakeport, Ca and will not arrive until Thursday. So we started driving around and actual found a decent campground right by the lake and the owner agreed to give us a double long spot without charging us double for it.

To make a long story short, we left the first campground this morning, even though we had paid for two more nights, and drove a whole 20 miles to the Aurora RV Marina and Park. The other park did not give us our money back, since they could not understand why we had a problem with the spot we were in. This is the first time that we have left a campground early (other than Nashville after the accident) and I hope it will be the last time.

Now we are settled back in nicely, have the awning out, grass is surrounding the rig and we have good internet again. It is a good day and we shall start exploring San Francisco tomorrow.

One last try!!

Our week in Klamath was a little bit disappointing, since the fog just did not want to lift and we really could not explore much of the coast. Klamath also is really not a town, since we could not even find a decent grocery store there. On Saturday we decided to give it one more try and head back up into Oregon to take a look at the coast one more time.

The first beach we came to still was a little bit in the mist, but we were impressed with how strong the ocean was beating against the beach.


We don't give up that easy and kept going north on Route 101 again. The mist is pretty when you are above it, but you can't watch for whales.

And then we got rewarded for our efforts. We found this cool looking natural bridge at one of the view points.

We were only about 2 miles north from the first beach with the fog and the mist had disappeared for a little bit. We were also able to see Arch Rock, which was fogged in on our way down from Coos Bay.


All in all it was a great day and we got to see the beauty of the Oregon coast one more time.

Trinidad

It has been a little bit challenging to check out the coast around the area, since the fog just does not want to lift for the last three days. However, we did find this nice little fishing town south of where we are staying.

The coastline is different here. There are big waves hitting the beach and the sand is very dark compared to the sand in Oregon. The vegetation is also a bit different. Check out these plants that we found in the dunes along the beach.

The Big Redwood Forest

It is not that the forest itself is that big, actually there are three parks in this area, but these trees are just huge. We decided to take the road that goes right through the State Park, not realizing in the beginning that this path really can't be called a road. I am so glad we got a small car. As further into the park we drove, the path got narrower and the trees just got bigger.




We felt so small compared to these giant trees. A lot of the trees seemed to have holes in the bottom and since a woman crawled into one before me, I decided to check it out. The last picture was taken from inside the tree, that turned out to be hollow all the way up. I wonder how many more of these giants are hollow and about to come down.

When Car met Tree ...

No, I did not hit a tree, Doug on the other side decided to drive right through one!!




It was our first encounter with these huge trees and I had no idea what was to come.

Coos Bay, OR

After a week of being parked next to Route 101 in Tillamook and trying to drowned out the highway noise by running two fans at night, we are finally again in a campground that is away from the highway. It is so quiet here that it was very noticeable the first night.

This area of Oregon is so beautiful. I am fascinated with the coastline and we have been driving up and down Route 101 all week. The first day out we went to a State Park in Coos Bay and actually got to see a gray whale.

I know that the whale can not be clearly seen, but trust me, it was there and it was just awesome to watch him. However, it was a little bit hard to take a picture of him. He never jumped out of the water, just came up for air ever so often. What we could hear very loudly was the sea lions, sunning themselves out on the rocks.

We are still in love with this great shore line and we did do some beach walking to explore the rocks at low tide with all the sea live that was stuck to them. We don't have to many pictures, since the sea mist (the locals say it is not fog) has been here pretty much every day and you can't take good pictures while the mist is there.


Amazingly, the sea mist is only right at the coast. If you drive inland about 1/2 mile, you are back in beautiful sunshine and blue sky. It made us wonder if we really would want a house at the coast, since a lot of time you really can't see the ocean. We actually looked at a house in Bandon, about 20 miles south of Coos Bay, but decided that it was not right for us and we are not ready yet to settle back down. We also found out that Oregon has a 23% rate of unemployment and there was maybe 10 job listings in the local paper. That certainly does not sound promising. But we will definitely keep this area in mind when we start house and job hunting again.

On Thursday we checked out the boardwalk in Coos Bay, which is totally different from the Jersey shore.


It has been a great week here, but we are ready to move on to go see the big Redwood trees in northern California.

Exploring more of the coast

We sure have been busy this week. On Thursday we decided to check out the coast south of Tillamook. The west coast has some amazing views.



And of course, what is a coast without a lighthouse. Unfortunately it is out of commission, but it still looked beautiful. The "octopus" tree was pretty impressive too.



So we kept on driving along the coast line and found these amazing sand dunes. I would have never imagined there would be any sand dunes around these cliffs.


We sure had a good time exploring the area.

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum

Not to far from here is the Spruce Goose, an air boat that takes off and lands on water, built by Howard Hughes. This plane is so huge that you can't get it into one picture.


There were so many planes, helicopters and military vehicles, you really did not know where to look first. Here are some more pictures.


Aren't these planes just incredible? Next was the Aviation museum across the way.