Friday, May 29, 2015 continued again
We drove on southward down the California coast. In just a short distance we saw.....
A Coast Guard cutter docked by a Coast Guard Station at the end of a jetty.
Floating on loose wooden pieces we several sea lions. The bigger of these two was very vocal.
This duck was preening itself on another floating wooden piece. We saw one sea lion leave one floating piece and go up on the same wooden piece this duck was on. The sea lion started honking and working his way towards the duck. It was funny to watch. The sea lion stopped. We left.
Here we are at the Klamath River Overlook. You can see the river flowing into the ocean. And the fog on the hilltop.
This overlook was supposed to be a good whale watching spot also. Apparently gray whales migrate northward from nursery lagoons in Mexico to feeding grounds in the Arctic.
I was lucky and got several pictures. I'm including 3 pictures below.
Notice the water spout in this picture.
You can tell there are 2 whales in this picture. The ranger here said it was probably a mother and her calf.
We took a coastal drive on the south side of Klamath River.
This gold bear was at the Klamath River lookout.
From this lookout, this is the view upstream. As you can tell the day has been foggy and or overcast all day.
This is part of the Coastal Drive. There were notices at the start that said "motorhomes and trailers prohibited". We could easily see why. Also there was a narrow unpaved part of the road close to the ocean. We enjoy having our Jeep for side trips like today.
Next we headed further south. We drove through Prairie Redwoods State Park on the Newton B Drury Scenic Parkway. Just south of the state park was Elk Prairie. It turns out there were several Roosevelt Elk to be seen.
We could see 2 buck in the group.
This was the younger buck. You can tell his antlers are still velvet.
This big boy was grazing steadily. Tic had to wait almost 10 minutes to get this picture. His horns are velvet also.
It was time to head home. We decided to drive US Hwy 101 back since it would be quicker.
We saw Paul Bunyon with his Blue Ox. We have seen Paul Bunyon from Maine to Wisconsin and now in California. We researched Paul and found that he can be found anywhere there is logging.
As we were near May Creek in an open field we saw.....
another herd of elk. No big bucks in this herd.
What a big day! We stopped and had hamburgers for dinner because we were tired and neither of us felt like cooking. It was about 7:30pm before we got home. Another wonderfully blessed day!!
Friday, May 29, 2015 - continued
Next we went to Crescent City Visitors Center and got a map showing all the points of interest down the coast almost to Eureka, CA.
This barrel of flowers was greeting us at the visitors center. I really liked the deep purplish blue flowers.
Next we decided to go visit the Battery Point Lighthouse. It is only open during low tide.
Now you can see why. This is the path to the lighthouse. In another 10 minutes the path was mostly free of water.
Flowers again! These were growing outside the lighthouse.
This plant was also growing closer to the lighthouse. It has really fat triangular shaped leaves with these pretty yellow flowers.
This is an oyster catcher bird. They are not considered rare but they are counting these birds to determine whether to consider them rare or not. They are noisy too!
The obvious seagulls were around also.
This is the island the lighthouse is on. Tic took this picture from a far distance.
This is the walkway up to the lighthouse. The wood carving is supposed to be a gray whale.
These buoys had washed up and been collected. They are hanging in the tree just behind the lighthouse.
The waves crashing against the rocks near the lighthouse were mesmerizing.
We drove further down the coast and saw sea lions, whales and elk. I'm going to put those pictures in the next post.
Friday, May 29, 2015
We have a big day planned for today. We got up about 7am, had breakfast, packed a lunch and took off.
The redwoods are our first adventure for the day.
On Hwy 199 from O'Brien, OR and just shortly after we crossed the state broader into California we came upon this tunnel.
To our surprise, this picture inside the tunnel came out.
When we turned off Hwy 199 into Jedediah Smith Park headed for the Stout Grove this covered bridge greeted us. It is made complete of wood. The curvature of the wooden arch is intriguing.
Along the way we followed a stream. These flowers were growing along side the stream. See the closeup below.
This is a closeup of the flowers above. Look at the tiny tubular flowers.
Several places in the forest were these flowering plants.
Here's the closeup of the flowers above. Aren't they pretty. You didn't think I'd have a post without flowers did you.
This tree was along side the road before we got to Stout Grove.
Here we are in the parking lot of Stout Grove. We've read that the redwood tree's roots are shallow. Many times redwoods grow close to each other so their roots intertwine and help support each other. The tree Dusty is standing by looks like a single base and divides into 4 separate trunks above my head.
We are walking a path through the Stout Grove. Look at the density of the redwoods.
Look at this huge burl that has spread probably along a root.
Look how long this fallen tree is. Dusty is stand were it broke because of a hill. Tic is standing at the end where it was cut to clear the path.
Look at the size of this tree that had to be cut to clear the path.
Here is another area with fallen trees that have been cut to clear.
This is a fallen redwood. The root system looks almost as big as some of the sequoias we saw. (Isn't Dusty a cute model? Hee Hee)
Here's a huge tree that is down. It's diameter is bigger than Tic is tall.
This is another downed tree. Notice all the new growth sprouting from the trunk.
This is a closeup of some of the new growth coming from the downed tree.
Now we are driving on through the Jedediah redwoods. Can you see the size of the trunk that had to be cut to clear the roadway?
This is on down the road. See the bicyclists? They give some perspective as to the size of the trees. Amazing!
This is to show the moss covering the red alder trees and the density of the forest in places.
I decided that this post is long enough soI will make new posts to cover the rest of our day.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Today we moved from Mt. Shasta City, CA to O'Brien, OR. We drove I-5 north to Grant Pass, OR then took US 199 south to O'Brien, OR. It was up and down most all the way. At the border of CA-OR we went up to 4465 ft elevation; then down to 2500 ft elevation and back up to 4310 ft elevation at Ashland. By the time we got to Grants Pass we were down to 960 ft elevation. We are at O'Brien now with an elevation of 1417 ft elevation. It was a beautiful drive.
This is shortly after we left Mt. Shasta City headed north on I-5. Beautiful valley!
This is our first big downhill almost to the CA-OR border. It was a 6% grade for 5 miles.
This is more of the downhill.
Then we crossed into Oregon.
Here we are coming down from 4310 ft elevation into Ashland. This was 6% grade for 6 miles this time.
Enough of the downhills. We have arrived in O'Brien. The main part of town is at one intersection. The campground is just a few 100 feet off this intersection.
We are staying at Lone Mountain RV Resort for the next 4 nights. It is a smaller park but very nice. We have a pull thru with full hook ups. Escapees get a 15% discount.
This is our parking site. The car is temporarily parked in the site next to us.
We walked to "The" intersection of town this evening.
This old restored police car was parked just outside the little food mart which also sold tacos.
This wooden Indian was on the porch of this little food mart.
This wooden old prospector or lumberjack (not sure what it was to represent) was standing next to the wooden Indian.
This beautiful flowering bush was not far from the building.
There were also several rose bushes. This is one of the roses.
We found this giant gnome on the porch of a caboose at the back side of the food mart parking lot. The Caboose used to be an ice cream parlor, but closed years ago. I looked in the windows and it was full of junk.
Beautiful afternoon. We plan to go see the Redwoods tomorrow.
