MOVED – Notaninch

Ever heard of Notaninch before?  That is when it is moving day, and you decide to move “Not An Inch” and stay put where you are.  That is what we did, but not only because we did not want to move….in fact, we took a day trip into Oregon for about 5 hours…more on that in a bit.  The main reason we did not move is because we want to attend Calvary Chapel of the Redwoods, which is six miles away from this RV Park.  For those who have followed us for a long time, we try to visit Calvary Chapel Churches during our travels.  We like this Church because they teach right out of the bible, verse by verse, called expository teaching.  Last year we visited a dozen or so Calvary Chapel Churches.  We plugged POIs into our GPS last year, and as we drove along Highway 101 yesterday headed to the RV  park the GPS lady said, “Calvary Chapel, Calvary Chapel nearby.”  Later I looked on the map and saw that we drove right by it, and when we headed to the Redwoods  later in the day, sure enough, there it was in plain sight right along the highway.

     

If you have been along the Oregon Coastline, especially during the summer, you know that you are bound to run into the marine fog layer.  The above pictures show what I mean.  And as is normal, the fog does not stay out in the Ocean, at times it was very thick today.

These folks from Oregon parked near us at Harris Beach State Park, one of the many stops we had today.  Lovely dogs.  Nice shirt he is wearing….

“Love them like Family, Feed them like Family”  It is a Blue Buffalo Pet Food shirt.  We love our dogs too…but they do fine with Beneful and table scraps and daily treats.

A little further north and we come to Whaleshead Beach.  Now what is funny is that both Marcia and I were reading it as Whale-shead, and we both were sitting there wondering, without saying anything, what the “H” was a Whale-shead.  There were signs for Whaleshead road, Whaleshead viewpoint, etc. etc.  It wasn’t until we got to the beach, and I looked out at the rocks that it dawned on me that the one rock did look like a Whale’s head breaching the water.  Marcia said, “If they intended it to be Whale’s Head, why did they not use proper English?”  New language I guess….Oregonbonics.

     

Whaleshead is at the southern end of Boardman State Park, while Arch Rock is at the northern end of the 12 mile long Samuel H. Boardman State Scenic Corridor.  As we arrived at Arch Rock, the path to the view point was very pretty…nice picnic area (above left), plush green scenery along the path (above right), and total fog when you look out at the arch (below).

In case you can’t see the “arch”, a little closer view below.

Other rocks out along this area of the coast are blanketed too (below).

Still, it was cool, it was interesting, and we had another ten or more miles to go….

And only a few miles north of “Arch Rock” we come to Pistol River State Park, the fog is lighter, there’s blue sky amongst the clouds, and you just got to wonder why the entire drive couldn’t be like this.  That is Oregon…that is how it is.

We then drove further north to Cape Sebastian State Park, and got this picture above showing the fog layer in places, and not in other places, some blue sky in the distance, and…..

…way off in the distance, Mack Arch.

   

In the above two pictures you can more clearly see where Mack Arch is located and can probably now see it in the distance in the first picture shown from Cape Sebastian State Park.

We get to Gold Beach, the furthest north we wanted to go today, and we see this bridge.  I ask Marcia to take a picture of it because it looked like the same type of bridges that we saw last year and found out that Conde McCullough was the designer of many of the bridges along Oregon’s Coast.  (See last year’s posting.)

We crossed the bridge and got this picture above of the Rogue River entering the Ocean, full of Salmon Fishermen.  They were up the river too, and my guess is there was around 50 boats out there in total that we saw.  And with that, we headed home….but sometimes you just can’t get there without a diversion or two along the way.  This time it was a very BIG diversion…

Did you know that Oregon has Redwood Trees too?  They have Coastal Redwoods in the very extreme south-western portion of the state.  So as I was driving along Highway 101, I see this sign just north of the California Boarder which says, “The Oregon Redwoods Trail”, and the car just suddenly took a left turn exiting the highway.  We travel about two miles down this new road, Winchuck River Road, and see another sign for the Oregon Redwoods Trail.  We turn on this road and see that it is going to be a four mile drive, on a gravel/dirt road which is not in as good shape as yesterdays road, but decide to continue.  We saw one truck on our way up coming down, and one car going up as we were coming down.  There was no one at the trail head parking lot.  It was wonderful!  However, it was not ADA accessible, so other than me walking about 1/10 of a mile along the path to see how it was, we had to enjoy the trees that we saw along the drive.

      

For those who want some solitude, but you want to enjoy the Giant Redwoods, and you are not afraid of a dirt road with pot holes and small ruts in it….well, I have the place for you,.  And for you who like to camp in National Forest Lands, this is NF Road 110 that gets you up to the Oregon Redwoods Trail.  And I have to say, the temps are just perfect to hide away from the hot summer sun.  For more info on the Oregon Redwood Trail, click here.

Tomorrow we REALLY DO move, moving to Port Orford, Oregon, about 70 miles from here.  We will be there for two nights, just enough to explore more of the fog, I mean, Oregon Coast.

Sunset, Big Trees, New Harbor

Hey kids, time to get inside…. Daddy has a sunset to catch.

That was last night in Klamath, after I posted yesterday’s blog….today we moved 35 miles north, just 5 miles south of Oregon, in a community called Smith River.  The Smith River enters the Pacific Ocean here, the river being named after Jedediah Smith, a frontier fur trader who is recognized as the first United States Citizen to cross from Mississippi through the Colorado/Utah frontier, through the Mojave Desert into California.  Jedediah and Robert Stuart discovered the Southern Pass, used by the Oregon Trail migration.

 

        

Above top is our view of the Smith River and Pacific ocean…a much better view is found in front of that building.  Above left is where the river enters the Pacific.  Above right is more downstream where the blue sky makes the river look much bluer.  This was at low tide, during high tide I think the sand bar will disappear.
 

We are staying at the Salmon Harbor RV Resort, another Passport America park for $19 cash, but has Internet and Cable TV.   Other than being right at the River/Ocean and having that view, there certainly are no thrills about this park which is pretty much a full-time live at RV park.

And I had to try and capture a bird in flight…and got these gulls coming right at me.

We stopped here just north of Crescent City so that we could visit the Jedidiah Smith Redwood Park.  We missed visiting this park last year, although we did drive along the highway through it on our way to get our fuel leak fixed last year in Grants Pass.  So one more night in California was in order just for seeing these giant Coastal Redwoods.

    

At the information center, they have a Coastal Redwood and a Giant Sequoia growing fairly close to each other, both the same age.  The top left is the Coastal Redwood, and the top right is the Sequoia.  The lower picture above shows them both, but due to the angle, it is hard in the picture to see that the Coastal Redwood is around 8 feet taller than the Sequoia, and the trunk of the Sequoia is a bit bigger in circumference than the Coastal Redwood.  I have not seen these trees growing so close together.

We decided the best way to see the park in the time we had was to drive the scenic Howland Hill route, mostly an unpaved, but fairly good condition, one lane road which travels about six miles through the park in a fairly remote area.  Although traffic goes both ways, there were few cars.  We passed over both the north and the south fork of the Smith River, just about where the two meet.

 

In the picture above, the ripple out in the middle of the river half way up were two swimmers… don’t know if they had clothing on or not… honestly did not look.

Marcia caught a picture of this quaint bridge (above) and the Smith River (below) before we got to the dirt road.

As you can see below, the dirt road is well packed, there was one spot, about 100 feet in length, where there were pot holes to deal with…otherwise it was a good road, just a bit narrow at times, but everyone we encountered drove at a slow pace, and most pulled over and waited for others to pass….which means that at times we pulled over, they pulled over, and we flipped coins to see who went first.

Along the route there is a turn off, paved road no less, to Stout Memorial Grove.   Below is a portion of a information sign about the grove.

The trail is a loop trail, but has a few other trails that spur off of it.  It is a good half mile once you walk about an eighth of mile down (up on way back) to get to the loop.

As we said last year when we visited all the other Redwood Forests we could find….taking pictures of Redwood trees is a big challenge.  They are so tall, they allow light in in some places, no light in other places, and there is so much to see.

Above shows you the problem….it takes two shots to get the full picture of just one group of trees.

And you can take shots like this all day long, but even these don’t tell the full story of how big and tall these things are.

And you can put a person, such as Marcia and her GoGo, up next to one….but this does not tell you that out in the forest away from where the GoGo can go, there are even larger ones than this.

    

And you can’t forget the forest floor, full of ferns and clover, and all sorts of plush green material laying on top of redwood chips and twigs and pieces.

     

And then you come across features like these …. trees which have fallen into trees, trees which fell decades ago with plant life growing out of the tree as if it was earth...

Or this tree that looks like a hand is growing out of it...

 

Or trees with trunks so mangled and twisted one has to wonder what this tree went through compared to the others around it…and just how old could it possibly be?

We wrapped up our drive which ended in Crescent City, and headed to Safeway from some more goods and dinner food, and back to the park to enjoy the birds and view of the water.  Tomorrow we will be in Oregon…not sure where yet, but that is the beauty of this life of leisure.