November 26-28, 2015 Ferndale to Richardson Grove, California

Thanksgiving day was a lovely 54 degrees sunny day. So nice to see the sun after so much rain.

The replica of the Cape Mendocino lighthouse is at the ticket booth for the Humboldt County Fairgrounds where we are camped. When the original lighthouse was decommissioned in 1948 the entire prisms and mechanical gears were moved to the fairgrounds. They seem to not be here anymore, but the replica light house still is. A beautiful fall maple in front of the library in Ferndale.

Diana and I went on a bike ride around Ferndale while the men supervised the smoking of the Thanksgiving turkey.We are in front of a mural of Ferndale, which is dairy country. A calla lily and camellia at the fair grounds and a bumper sticker seen in town.

   

John and Rob’t supervising the smoking of the turkey in the right of the photo. Diana and Rob’t  joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. We met them two years ago in Klipchuck campground in Washington state. They also live and travel in an RV and we run into each other on the road.

Right across the street from our RV park at Richardson’s Redwood Grove is the One-Log house.  It was built in 1946 from a 2100 year old redwood tree. It is on a flatbed, so it is one of the early RV’s. Inside it is 7 feet high and 32 feet long. 

The Grandfather Tree is near the One-Log house. It is really, really big. 245 feet high and 24 feet in diameter.

 

These are just a couple of the  chainsaw carvings in front of the gift shop. We had dinner with David and Kay. I went to college with Kay. It was great to see them.

The coach at the Richardson Redwood Grove RV park. This morning it was so cold there was frost on things. It is time to go south!

   

We hiked today in Richardson’s Redwood Grove State Park with Kay and David today. It was supposed to be a 4 mile hike, but we got on the wrong trail it was about 4 and a half and we had to drive back in our car to pick theirs up. Then we had left over turkey for dinner.

November 25, 2015 The Lost Coast, California

We drove on part of the Lost Coast, from Ferndale to Petrolia.Really a pretty drive. Sunny and in the 50’s. 32 degrees last night and tonight. Brr.

We got up to the top of the first ridge and looked over at the lost coast. Then  through cattle country-rolling hills , pine trees,eucalyptus trees and cows. 

Up over another rise and saw the ocean again, it blended with the sky. Looking down into the green Bear River valley.

 

Approaching the ocean and flowers on the beach. The weather and clouds were beautiful.

 

Lovely beaches with cows grazing on them.

 

The church in Petrolia and downtown, with one building that is post office and general store. We had lunch at the Yellow Rose at the west end of town.

 

We went back the way we came.  Stopped at the beach and checked out the tide pools on the way back.

 

Then we went down to the county park beach just west of Ferndale. I found this I love you on the beach and had my sweetie pose with it. The evening light on the beach was beautiful.

 

More evening beach. The foam was blowing by in the wind like it was on ice instead of sand. There were big creamy waves.

Water running back into the ocean under red cliffs and sunset.

   

Yellow flowers from the beach, some frozen either snow or hail on the first ridge we came too, tide pool inhabitants and I think immature black berries.

November 22-24, 2015 Ferndale, California

We drove from Brookings, Oregon to Ferndale, California today.

Sunday was a pretty lazy day. I figured out how to watch TV on our new flat screens today. We haven’t been able to figure out how our new TV’s work on cable .So I pulled out all the manuals and found out I had to switch the antennae to cable from broadcast. We have never had such nice TV’s before. Still was not much on, but it was entertaining. We don’t have any kind of satellite, so we can only see TV when we are rarely in a park with a cable hookup.  The sunset on the beach in Brookings last night.  Today we passed into California. I missed the welcome to California sign, so you get a photo of the fruit police stop. They asked us if we had citrus or avocados, nope, so they let us in.  The northern coast has lots of redwoods trees, so  we went in the Redwood gate to the Golden state. The bottom is a mural in Crescent City of the light house. You can only tour it when the low tide is during the day, otherwise the road is covered and you can’t get to it.

Redwoods and ocean views along the highway.

 

Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox and a Christmas bear at the Trees of Mystery.  Paul is 49 feet high with a 66 foot chest and 54 foot waist.  Babe is  35 feet high.

I love the name Orick. It is the Indian word for the sound a frog makes.  The coach at the Ferndale fair grounds. It is in a very pastoral setting. Hardly anyone else here. We are spending Thanksgiving here. John is going to smoke a turkey breast.

Sunset in Ferndale. The same view from the bus in the morning. It rained off and on all day. When the sun came out it was beautiful. Ferndale is known as Cream City. Rich pastures were ideal for dairy cows and founding farmers translated their prosperity into lavish homes known as Butterfat Palaces.

At the fair grounds we found these three graves of champion cows.  The Victorian downtown has changed little over the years.

The Gingerbread mansion is a B and B now. The Palace Saloon is the farthest westernly bar in the continental United States.

 

We went to neighboring Loleta Cheese factory. They were not making any cheese today, but we tasted many of their yummy cheeses. They had a lovely garden out back. It still amazes me after all my years in Colorado to see winter gardens.

After John won $22.25 at the casino he took me to lunch at the Eel river brewing company. Our RV friends Rob’t and Diana are camped in their parking lot, it is a Harvest Host site, so they had a few drinks with us.