The Buckle

Our next stop is Willow Creek to visit our friends Rich and Anne.  We are hoping for some dry weather so we can fix the leak we discovered during the Arcata rain.  I guess when you live in the desert you can own your RV for over a year and not know that you have a significant leak in your slide.

Bill and Rich have been friends since college.  In fact, Rich was there for Bill’s first day of teaching and just happened to stop for a visit on Bill’s last day of teaching.  How serendipitous! Whenever we get together we always have the best time and just pick up wherever we left off no matter how long between visits.

Rich and Anne are building their retirement home on a small half acre lot with the Trinity River behind them and a killer view of the Salmon mountains in the Trinity Alps out their front door.  They have been working on the place for less than a year and it is coming along beautifully.  The house is small but very roomy due to the open floor plan and high ceilings.

I love Anne’s gardens, she is a woman with a plan!  The sunflower shaped garden in the front will be spectacular this summer.  She is so knowledgeable about plants that many times when she was describing a plant or flower I would just nod my head in awe.

Rich cooked an excellent dinner and we stayed up past midnight laughing and telling stories (all true of course).  Unfortunately, Anne had to go to work in the morning.  She woke up feeling under the weather, lets call it the flu, but before she went to work and while the rest of us were still sleeping, she whipped together a delicious raspberry buckle for our breakfast.  I am soooo impressed!

Since it was a beautiful day we packed up the dogs (Marley had his backpack with our beer) and headed to East Fork Campground for a hike.  Rich and Anne spent last summer working as a campground host here, so Rich provided a narrative during our hike on last season's more colorful campers and their escapades.  The campground has not yet opened for the season so we had the place to ourselves and the dogs could run free.

 
We hiked the steep road at the end of the campground which seemed to go uphill forever.  All of a sudden Marley spied something and jumped over the edge down the hill into deep undergrowth.  After about five minutes he was able to find his way back up to the road, minus the backpack.  Rich was the hero and ventured into the brush to rescue the backpack and the beer.

If you look closely you can see Rich with the backpack.

After enjoying the hard earned beer, we finished our hike and headed back to Willow Creek to successfully fix our leak (thanks, Rich, for the use of your ladder and chop saw) and make some dinner.  We settled in around the campfire, ate dinner, played an exciting game of corn hole, told some more lies, laughed til we cried, and had raspberry buckle with ice cream for our late night dessert.

Love you guys!

Thanks again for a wonderful time and we hope to return the hospitality at the cabin in October.

Today's 3 Fun Facts:

1. The large, showy white "petals" of the dogwood blossoms are actually leaf like structures called bracts positioned behind the small flower. Poinsettias have the same structure.
2. A buckle is a member of the cobbler family which includes crumbles, crisps, bettys, pandowdies, and grunts. 
3. Don't trust your dog to carry your beer.

Raspberry Buckle

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 pint raspberries
powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  butter a 2 quart oval or square baking dish.

Cream butter and sugar with an electric mixer until fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time beating after each addition.  Whisk dry ingredients and add gradually to wet with mixer on low speed.  Spread in dish, scatter berries on top.  Bake until toothpick comes out clean, 45-50 minutes.  Let cool 20 minutes, dust with powdered sugar.

Yum!

Catching Up

I know that I need to catch up on my blog entries, but I have a good excuse for not posting, I have been catching up with old friends and trying to catch me some internet and cell service.

After visiting the lighthouse and Russian Gulch, we drove inland and stopped for the night at the KOA campground in Benbow along the Eel River.  We hiked under the freeway to check out the Benbow Historic Inn.  The inn was designed by architect, Albert Farr, who is best known for The Wolf House which he designed for author Jack London in Glen Ellen, CA. The inn was built by the talented Benbow family, consisting of nine brothers and sisters who also constructed the Benbow Dam and Power Company.  The inn opened to the public in July of 1926 and became a popular destination for folks traveling on the new Redwood Highway.  The hotel guests have included Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Basil Rathbone, Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, and many others.

 

 
After one night in Benbow, we headed north toward Arcata.  We decided to take the Avenue of the Giants to fully enjoy the majesty of the redwoods.  So much for our conversation about the smallest road.

Along the way we stopped in our favorite north coast small town, Ferndale.  Ferndale is an historic town which has a Victorian charm that we haven’t seen anywhere else.  Every time we travel to this area we take a detour over the Ferndale bridge and through the cow pastures to visit this quaint town.  The Golden Gait Merchantile is a wonderful place to browse back in time.

 

The rain started to come down so we continued on to Arcata and checked into the Mad River RV Park.  Unlike previous years, we had called ahead and gave our friends John and Kate advance notice that we were coming.  John was committed to his Wednesday evening bike ride, so we met up with Kate for a Mexican dinner.  Excellent chili rellenos, yum!  After dinner we drove to Kate and John’s house for a great visit (and the use of their dryer to finish drying our jeans, thank you!). Since lots of rain was in the forecast, John and Kate insisted that we use their car to get around while in Arcata (thanks again!).

Our Arcata ride.

We made excellent use of the car the next day and made a run to K Mart for dog food, water and other items too awkward for the motorcycle.  After shopping, we headed to the North Coast Co-Op for some granola and then drove to the Humboldt State campus (Bill’s alma mata)  to see if anything has changed in the last 40 years.  The campus has changed quite a lot since the mid 70s when Bill attended, new buildings, new entrance, new sports complex, and a few less trees.  The campus is still quite the stair master work out to traverse.  John told us his daughter calls HSU, the Hills and Stairs University, which seems very appropriate. According to Bill the most dramatic change is there are a lot more women attending HSU now.

Founder's Hall at HSU

We caught up with John and Kate after work and while dinner was cooking we went for a lovely 45 minute hike in the community forest.  The rain held off while we were hiking and the forest was beautiful with the glistening ferns and tall redwoods.  Dinner was delicious and so was the visit.  Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a camera so the evening was not captured on film, just wonderful memories.

Today’s 3 Fun Facts:

1. The Benbow Historic Inn was added to the National Register of Historic places in 1983.
2. During WWII, Founder's Hall, which can be seen from the Pacific Ocean, was camouflaged so Japanese submarines would not use it as a navigational aid.
3. Roads along our route can get smaller.

Lighthouse

Before we headed back to highway 101 we traveled south to the Point Cabrillo Light Station.  The lighthouse was constructed in response to the 1906 earthquake.  The demand for lumber to rebuild San Francisco significantly increased maritime commerce on the coast and maritime safety was a concern.  Construction began in 1908 and the lens was illuminated for the first time in 1909. 

The lighthouse sits on a point and the ocean views are spectacular. The lighthouse itself is the museum while the old Blacksmith shop has been converted to a small aquarium and an Interpretative Center. Several of the buildings at the lighthouse have been renovated and are available as vacation rentals.

From  there we did a short drive further south to the Russian Gulch State Park.  Unfortunately, only RVs and trailers under 24 feet were allowed in the park.  We found a small stretch of shoulder across the street from the entrance, parked the behemoth and walked back into the park.

We hiked the Headlands Trail along the cliff edge, it was amazing!

We finally made our way back to highway 20 and the windy road through the mountains back to Willits.

Conversation on the drive back:

Bill:  Lets make this the smallest road we travel this trip.
Peggy:  That sounds like a good idea.

This post is dedicated to my friend Kathy, who loves all things lighthouse.  We were thinking of you the entire time we were there.

My 3 Fun Facts:

1. The Point Cabrillo Lightkeepers Association has received state and national awards for the restoration efforts. 
2. Russian Gulch's Devil's Punchbowl is a collapsed sea cave 100 feet across and 60 feet deep.
3. Postponing the drive back on highway 20 did not make it any easier.

Squirrel!!!

The pictures tell the story.....

My 3 Fun Facts for today:

1. The squirrels at MacKerricher State Park are very well fed.
2. The squirrels find great pleasure in teasing the visiting dogs.
3. A squirrel running across the trail in front of said dog will cause the shoulder attached to the arm holding the leash to almost be dislocated.

What a Dump!

We traveled to the edge of the “lost coast” specifically to go to the dump.  I know that is not your usual vacation spot, but it is a very old dump with an interesting history.  From 1906 to 1967 the local residents of Fort Bragg went to the local cliffs, admired the view, and threw their trash off the cliffs and into the ocean.  Everything from cars, appliances, bottles, cans and batteries were just dumped off the cliffs owned by the Union Lumber Company into the sea.  In 1967 the California State Water Resources Control Board and local city leaders decided that this was not a good idea and closed the area for dumping.  Over the years several cleanup campaigns were launched and the large items were removed.  The ocean’s pounding waves cleaned the beach of everything else but the broken glass and shards of pottery.  Several decades of pounding waves have left the beach covered with water tumbled sea glass, and the dump is now called Glass Beach.

 

When I first read about Glass Beach I was intrigued (hence the trip to Fort Bragg), but it turns out that this area is so much more.  We camped in the MacKerricher State Park which extends nine miles along the coast.  We hiked along the “haul road” which was created to haul lumber to the Union Lumber Company Mill in Fort Bragg and were treated with beautiful ocean views, rocky headlands, tidal pools, deer, and seals giving birth on the beach.

 

The seals were fascinating to watch.  On the beach they are such awkward animals but in the ocean they navigate through the rocky outcroppings with ease.

  

 

Don't worry we did not get close to the mama and baby, we stayed on the cliffs above the beach and used a telephoto lens.  No seals or babies were disturbed or harmed in these pictures.

This area has been an unexpected surprise and worth the winding drive on highway 20 to get here.
After being warned 6 or 7 times by the locals to turn around and take highway 20 back to Willits rather than head north on highway 1 to Leggitt, we decided to heed that advice and are headed out this morning to continue our trek north.

My 3 Fun Facts for this morning:

1. You must stay at least 50 yards from the seals especially with young calves, as they are very sensitive to disturbances.
2. Fort Bragg is the largest town on the scenic coast between San Francisco and Eureka.
3. Sometimes Mother Nature has a way of fixing our mistakes with unusual and beautiful results.

Santa Rosa

We spent two nights parked at the Santa Rosa Fairgrounds (again Easter weekend, not the best for traveling without reservations).  Our main purpose for this stop was to visit with our friends Tom and Linda.  Saturday was a lovely day, so we chose to hike the Laguna de Santa Rosa Regional Trail.  It was a very gentle hike with gorgeous views of the vineyards and wetland preserve.

We even encountered a friend sunning himself along the trail.

Hiking worked up our thirst and appetite, so we headed to Sebastopol for lunch and a beer (or maybe a couple of beers).  All in all it was a very lovely day with some good friends.

Cement Ships and the Wall

Besides a killer view out my front window, Seacliff State Beach has a couple of other memorable qualities.  The first is the rather large cement tanker ship named the SS Palo Alto parked at the end of the fishing pier.

Steel shortages during World War I created the opportunity to build ships from concrete.  Unfortunately, the order for the $1.5 million Palo Alto was placed in 1918 just six months before the end of the war. With the end of the war, the desperate need for ships also ended and the Palo Alto was never completed.  In 1929 after years of languishing in the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Oakland, the Seacliff Amusement Company bought the ship and had it towed to the Seacliff Beach.  After months construction, the pier was finished, the ship was revamped and by the summer of 1930 the Palo Alto was opened as an entertainment resort center. There was a ballroom, a restaurant with beautiful ocean views and carnival type concessions on the afterdeck.

Unfortunately, bad timing again plagued the SS Palo Alto and the Seacliff Amusement Company went bankrupt after just two short years, due in large part to the great depression. The first winter after the close of the ship, a  heavy storm cracked the Palo Alto amidships, eventually leading to the extensive damage seen today.
Today the Palo Alto is a wildlife sanctuary providing a home to a variety of wildlife including fish, crabs, mussels, barnacles, harbor seals, sea gulls, pelicans, and cormorants. It seems that after a very rocky beginning, the SS Palo Alto has finally found its true purpose.

The second interesting feature at Seacliff is known as “the wall” (no, not a Pink Floyd reference) or “the memorial wall”.  If you take the beach walk all the way to the end of the campground there is a large private residence wall hidden behind seven olive trees.  No one really knows how it was started but it is filled with touching tributes to beloved people and animals.

One of the most unique memorials is an out-stretched hand in bronze with the plaque that says, “To life, to love, to health and to all the loving stories on the wall — ‘High Five!’”.

We had a wonderful time at Seacliff State Beach and will definitely return again.

My 3 Fun Facts:

1. Concrete ships were the brainchild of a Norwegian Civil Engineer named Nicolay Fougner.
2. In February of 1936 the SS Palo Alto was sold to the state for one dollar.
3. Timing is everything.