Part 3: California

Day 8, Tuesday Oct 19th (Brookings - Crescent City)

After arriving in California, we pulled over at a tourist information center to get a better idea of some activities to partake in. We received some information from the lady working there, but when we went to get back in the van....I locked the keys in the van. Turns out the key for the ignition is a different cut than the one for the door, tough break. After about 30 minutes of struggling to break into andy, Jason finally managed to hit the unlock button with a bent fly swatter we received from the info center. I'm glad he was the one to unlock it because I thought he was going to start crying if it had taken any longer. After that ordeal, we pulled over at a beach to gather some free driftwood for our fire that night. On the beach, Lisa spotted an Elephant seal that looked like it was dying. Jason and I went over to the dying seal to see if we could maybe pull it back into the ocean, as it was lying on the upper part of the beach. I went to grab its tail and it was then I realized that it was not dying because it looked liked it was going to eat me for a snack. It was after we saw the sign on the beach that said it was performing a molting in which they shed their skin. Needless to say, the day was very entertaining and we got to finish it off by entering the Red Wood forrest and paying $35 for a campsite that was probably the worst one yet, yay.

-Taylor

Day 9, Wednesday Oct 20th Cresent City - Fort Bragg Redwood Forest 2


The morning began with us all holding our breath and driving out of the campsite hoping that the van would make it to the next gas station. The first town we came to looked promising, but the only gas station was an abandoned building. We lucked out when the last sign in town was a "got gas?" sign and there was a little hole in the wall corner store that had one little gas pump that was calling our name. It was a day of one of my favorite activities, driving on windy roads. We decided that we might as well go full board on the scenic drive and take number 1 highway through to more of the coast. And I was designated as the back seat driver and with that comes car sickness. The drive was a slow one, after a somewhat disappointing drive through the Redwood Forest. We attempted to take Andy through the drive-thru tree, but it was too tall so we decided to save the five dollars and take the pass on that activity. But the view after we got out of the forest was worth it. The view of the California Coast was just as unique and beautiful as the Oregon coast. Our first stop after the drive once we got to Fort Bragg was to the Safeway to pick up discounted booze then we headed off to the next campsite, an RV park right by the ocean. (1.75L of Vodka for $11.00, I'm a big fan of the Safeway club now) We had picked up some "free firewood" that we saw on the side of the highway and when we had tried to make our fire the wood was too wet so we had to head down to the ocean to pick up some driftwood. When we were walking back our neighbors informed us that we had some visitors in our site, a group of vicious raccoons. It was Jasons and Taylors activity for the night trying to scare them off while we were playing our nightly game of golf. An activity that included screams, rocks and firewood.

-Lisa

Day 10, Thursday Oct 21st (Fort Bragg - not very far)


We took a look at the map and noticed that if we follow Highway 1 to San Fran we won't encounter a decent sized city for a few days. We are getting a little run down and smelling, so we decided to have a maintenance day, shopping, internet-ing and laundry. We went to a very cheap rural laundry-mat with spanish signs everywhere, however, it had tons of machines so we were able to simultaneously do all our laundry and play a quick nine holes :) The weathers pretty average here, so staying in doors isn't as bad as it sounds. Gotta run, expensive parking lots will be filling up soon. Over n Out.

 -Jason