A little Hiking, Shopping, and Truck washing

Wednesday:  October 03, 2012 

We are about 15 miles south of Crescent City, the closest place to food shopping for us.  So we took off for Crescent City about 11 am to get some groceries and maybe find a place to wash the salt off of the truck.  In the 15 miles to Crescent City there are 2 areas of road construction.  Those made the trip of 15 miles take about an hour.  This road really does need the work though.

We found a Safeway in Crescent City which we now like a lot.  Patty decided to get a discount card from them as we seem to use Safeway a lot here in the west.  We don’t store a lot of food for several reasons.  One is space and another being weight and, we like to eat as fresh as we can.  We get enough food for 3-4 days which means we need to go to the store often.  It is sort of nice to see what food is local to each area, so we use it as sort of cheap entertainment.

We drove around some to see if there was a car wash for the truck.  We found a little outdoor market, nothing we wanted, but we stopped just check it out.  One of the vendors was selling photos of the area that were pre-tsunami and after tsunami.  The pictures were of the harbor in town.  I didn't know that the tsunami that hit Japan last year also hit here.  The vendor said that the harbor drained just like a bath tub including the swirl in the center.  The boats collided in the swirl and just rolled around on each other.  It was a mess.  That was March, 2011.  They are still feeling this disaster here and it's visible throughout the devastation of the town.  We didn't know this so it really changed our perspective on the town then.

On the way out of town going back toward our RV we spotted a car wash!  I only use the car wash type that has the high pressure hose with the switch for “wash”, “rinse”, and other things I don’t need.  The truck is too big for the drive through type.  I wash the truck and then Patty and I wipe it down with shammys we both have.  Yes, Patty has her own pink shammy.  Both of us wiping the truck down make it go so much faster.

Truck washed, we headed out to take a short hike that Patty picked out on line.  It is only a little over a mile long so it will be quick.  The hike turned out to be much longer in time than what we though a mile would be.  The trail head started at 1000 feet above the Pacific at the mouth of the Klamath River.  We could just see where our RV was parked off in the distance.  Anyway, the trail was to an observation deck that was about ½ mile west while switch backing us down for about 500 feet.

The trail path was narrow and in some places steep with loose rocks.  It was nice though getting the Pacific cool breezes every few minutes as relief.  We saw 2 snakes cross our path on the way back up.  Patty stepped on one of them and didn't know it, I saw it as I was behind her.  We also found a patch of ripe blackberries that we ate along the way.  It took us about 30 minutes to hike down and about 50 back up.  We were both soaked with sweat by the time we got back to the top.  It was a good hike!

View from our truck at the trail head.

Pacific meets the Klamath River.

Looking east toward our campsite.

Trail splits here.  We took the one going down and to the left.

Patty getting Blackberries with here walking stick.

Close-up of the Blackberries.

Trail getting steeper.

The out cropping of rock is where we are headed.  You can see the trail at the left.

This is the view of the mouth of the Klamath River  from the overlook at the end of the trail.

This is the view looking at the coast in the other direction.

The trail map.

We got back to the RV just it was getting dark.  This was our last night here so I put away the grille and did a few other things so we could be ready in the morning.  We had left overs to eat so we got those ready and then I watched the presidential debate.

Another great day!

Tomorrow we head to Santa Rosa in the Napa Valley area of Sonoma County CA.  We are planning to stay at the Sonoma County Fair grounds and attend the Harvest Festival there.  It's a long trip of just about 300 miles.

Stay tuned!