Once more the skies were brilliantly blue when we woke in Eureka. The winds were calm and there wasn’t a bit of fog, but the 32 degree temperatures were still a bit daunting. We read the forecasts and knew that it wasn’t a lot warmer in the Sacramento valley to the east, and that we had snow and rain to look forward to once back in Rocky Point. Our decision was to drive the winding 142 miles of Highway 36 across the mountains, to stop for the night in a forest service campground along the way if it was accessible. If not, we would continue on toward Red Bluff and possibly go park at the Rolling Hills Casino about 20 minutes south.
Timing our travels sometimes gets a bit confusing. My ex mom-in-law lives in Red Bluff, and wasn’t going to be home until afternoon on Saturday, so we needed to plan accordingly since I wanted to stop for a visit while passing by. We wanted to spend the night in Redding on Saturday night before we spent Sunday morning getting the MoHo ready for her last month in storage. Even though we had a bit of a schedule to figure out, it was nice to just take off on the highway with the options open.
Highway 36 is 142 miles of wild road indeed. While it doesn’t have quite the grades that our Lost Coast roads had, and didn’t have quite as many hairpin curves, the big difference was that this time we were in the MoHo towing the baby car. If it had been hot, we would have unhooked the car and both driven the steepest grades, but the cool temperatures were in our favor and the MoHo did just fine. Jeremy once again settled into his dash position and it only took us 4 hours to go less than 100 miles to a small forest service side road leading down to the Basin Gulch forest service campground.
We were smart enough to unhook and take the baby car to check out the campground before driving the MoHo down that side road, and once we looked around we thought, ‘Sure, no big deal”. 
With our Golden Age Pass, camping was a hefty 5 bucks for a lovely little campground, completely alone in the middle of nowhere without another car or camper anywhere in sight. A mile or so before the campground, there were a few summer cabins, but we didn’t see any cars or people at all. It was only about 2:30 in the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to settle in, go for a nice walk along the stream and relax a bit before supper. I slept better and longer that night than any in very a long time, with the absolute darkness and silence of the forest around us.
The next morning we continued the last 50 miles or so to Red Bluff, and thought we might go park at the Red Bluff Lake Recreation Area to wait for Gen to get home. To my surprise, there was an RV park at the lake. The campground however, was federal, and our Golden Age Pass got us a site with water and electric for $12.50. By the time we settled in again, it was time to go visiting. Gen is 87 years old now, and spiffy and lovely as always. We enjoyed our visit before driving the mile or so back to our waiting home. The warm sun felt fabulous.
Sunday morning we took our own sweet time packing up, cleaning up the MoHo, and driving north on I-5 to Redding to our favorite credit card operated self car wash. This time we got the entire rig washed for a mere $6.50. Love it when we don’t have to keep messing with the quarters to keep the spray going. For the last time this year we slid the rig into the big shed, piled everything into the car, and headed north to Klamath Falls. It happens to us every single time. As we drop down from Mt Shasta into the Klamath Basin, in the midst of quiet contemplation, one or the other of us says out loud, “I love this place”. It certainly isn’t perfect. Winter time can be brutal and spring can be long in coming. It’s the interface between desert and mountains, and can be brown and barren at times. But the vistas are wide, and now, even in February, the Pacific Flyway birds are returning. The fields and marshes along Highway 97 are already filling with thousands of swans and ducks, and the snow geese are back.
We were home by 5, and the car was unloaded and unpacked before 6. We are getting good at this back and forth thing. It’s so good to go, and it’s so good to come home. So far, I love not having to choose between one or the other.
Soup on a Monday night
The last few days have been mostly about snow. I got tired of putting up photos of snow and more snow, so decided to take a break from it. The photos, that is, not the snow. We got more than a foot again on Saturday night and spent almost 3 hours Sunday morning shoveling, plowing, and running the snow blower. I still managed to put up some Christmas lights on the big front porch, and take down a few Christmas things to make home all bright and cozy. I’ll be leaving on the 9th, and with the exception of the short space of time between my flight’s arrival at midnight in Medford, and our departure the next morning by 7 or so for Southern California, I won’t be home until after Christmas. I’m thinking I need to find a small little something to take with us in the MoHo. When we traveled during December in 2007 we had a nice wreath on the grille. Guess I can do that again, at least.
Today I went to work, but I must say, the sweet commute was anything but sweet this morning. The temperatures haven’t been above freezing for many days now and the road was icy and treacherous. In town it was just plain cold. Klamath Falls is in a basin, and the fog sometimes lies in thick during the winter. It’s ugly. My least favorite weather is cold, icy, gray fog, with steely, leaden skies. Ick. When I got home tonight I cooked up some great soup, a bit of a break from all the Thanksgiving leftovers. It made a nice supper for us while Mo watched the 49’rs do their thing and I escaped to the computer room to write and play with photos.
Zuppa Toscana Soup is one of my favorites. I think there are several recipes out there attempting to copy the famous Olive Garden soup, but my friend Maryruth of course, found the best one. I wonder if all that fresh kale offsets the Italian sausage, bacon, and cream. Hmmmm. Maybe I should get shoveling again.
After Rick showed us how to put a video in our blogs, I thought I would share this clip of Abby running through the pathways made by the snow blower. I couldn’t seem to get the clip under 15 seconds, however, per Rick’s suggestion, but 44 seconds is a lot better than the 3 minutes of video that I started with. Just like Rick’s dog Rylie, Abby gets all excited about playing in the snow. She loves it when she thinks we are heading out for a walk. She also loves the paths, and thinks they are made just for her. Sometimes an occasional neighbor dog will come down to try the paths out as well, much easier doing your business on a nice path than in the deep snow, right?
<img src="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_rBpk0C4raa8/TPRttI81XaI/AAAAAAAA8Ac/Zpj-5tCzT6w/videoa3e1ab948f27%5B3%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" style="border-style: none" galleryimg="no" onload="var downlevelDiv = document.getElementById('53fec6e2-1ef7-45f8-9371-a922df60d708'); downlevelDiv.innerHTML = "http://www.youtube.com/v/Oj_fqLaPlYc&hl=en“;” alt=””>Snowy weekend
The snow has come for real to Rocky Point, with enough on the road yesterday that Mo had to plow. She fires up the tractor for the road leading to the house (aptly named Easy Street), and I get out the shovel and do the big driveway by hand. We have a snow blower as well, but I only get that out when the stuff is really deep, at least a foot or two. Yesterday it was just 2 inches, and this morning another 2 inches. I think an hour of shoveling up and down that driveway qualifies for at least half of my ten thousand steps a day, (which I haven’t actually done in a very long time). Difference between our snow and Rick’s snow is that ours probably won’t melt. If you have a dog, or know a dog, or just want to laugh from joy, drop over to Rick’s page and check out his video of Rylie running around in the snow. Abby doesn’t get quite so excited, although I do have some videos of her doing similar silly stuff in water, warm! water that is.
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When I moved back to Rocky Point last year, I packed up a lot of boxes of stuff, even after a year of thinning and selling and giving away stuff, I still have stuff to deal with. Mo has a small shed out back, and in that shed are some chests and boxes, including a great drawer full of travel brochures and memorabilia. I went out there yesterday to find something and came upon an old travel journal. Mo and I have traveled together since mid 2003, and it was great to find all those old handwritten stories tucked away with places, dates, all the details that we forget as the years continue. Sometimes we go to the blog to try to remember a trip, or a date, and it is a bit frustrating to find that what we are trying to remember is pre-blog.
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I decided it would be a good idea to go back in time and add those old trips and photos here. I was a little bit concerned that the posts would show up all over the place as recent, but I checked a few blog rolls and it seems that as long as I remember to put the right publish date, blog followers won’t be bombarded with ancient history. It’s fun to go through the stories and photos and get it all down in proper blog format. I find I enjoy my own memories more with the illustrations accompanying the text, so it’s a great little trip down memory lane. Mo thought is would be nice to have everything in one place as well. I didn’t start blogging our travels until we were on our cross country trip back to Florida, and we started that trip in the baby MoHo and bought the current one on our return trip, but that story is here. The prior stories are coming along. I know that I don’t often crawl back in blog archives to see someone’s history. So much is going on right in the present it’s often hard to keep up!
This week I get to remember that I really am retired. I don’t have to work at all! The weekend has been great, with shoveling, hauling another load of crackling dry juniper to the porch for the fire, cooking, cleaning, and some good knitting and tv watching as well. We had three Grey’s Anatomy shows stacked up on the DVR so that was great fun, not having to wait a whole week for the outcome, just fast forward. Today I am continuing with the cleaning projects, and have all my Cooks Illustrated magazines out on the counter looking for some new recipes for Thanksgiving. I know better than to mess with family classics, but I can at least experiment with an extra here and there. Half my children will be here with spouses and kids, the other half are in other parts of the country. I am really looking forward to a big dinner, to the cooking and camaraderie, to family time. The four years I was in California were hard for me, my family couldn’t manage the distance to travel to me, and I haven’t hosted the holiday at my home since 2003, when I still lived in Klamath Falls. Family and food and fun. Mo’s brothers are up north, and her sister is in Colorado, so they don’t often manage to get everyone together for Thanksgiving. So Mo will be here as well, patiently tolerating and even enjoying my family and all it’s craziness.
Perfect Day on Big River
It was a perfect day to go kayaking. Once again there was an eight foot high tide predicted for just after noon, giving us a good two hours before to paddle upstream, and another two hours to paddle back down with the ebbing tide. The launch site at Big River just east of the Mendocino Bay Bridge on Highway 1 is huge, with a boat ramp, but also with a broad sandy gentle beach perfect for us.
The weather was clear and crisp, if a bit cool. The current on the river was negligible, and with the incoming tide paddling upstream was easy. It was Abby’s first time out in the new kayak, and it was a perfect place for Mo to adjust to paddling with Abby while she learned to settle in to the bigger cockpit.
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On a Monday morning in November, we very nearly had the entire river to ourselves, with a single rower passing us going downstream, a lone kayaker going back downstream toward the beach, and a young couple paddling a large wooden outrigger canoe. The rest of the trip we were completely alone in the silence of the river and the surrounding redwood forest.
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We saw ducks, herons, cormorants, and on our way back to the mouth of the river, a group of seals. Reading about the trip in the Sea Kayaking book suggested a nice sandy beach about 3.5 miles upriver where we could take a break and get out of the boats. I think the combination of high river water and a very high tide completely obscured the beach, however, because we never found it. After a couple hours on the river, a bathroom break became somewhat of a necessity, so we improvised. In an area that looked just a bit less abrupt than the rest of the banks, we tied both boats up to a small stump and managed to crawl out of them from the deep water. Abby was glad for the break as well before we saw the tide turning and decided it was time to head back downstream.
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Paddling downriver at about 4mph was effortless until we were within less than a mile from the launch site where the winds picked up considerably. I didn’t get any photos of the big wind generated waves because I was busy paddling hard, and that last half mile was the hardest of the day. We had been warned of this, so it wasn’t unexpected and I’m glad it didn’t last any longer than it did.
On the beach once again, we easily loaded up the boats, but by then the wind was darn cold and we were definitely ready for a break. The tiny, incredibly picturesque town of Mendocino was just a stone’s throw from the launch, and we thought a good dose of fish and chips would be perfect. Many shops were open on this slow Monday afternoon,but open restaurants weren’t easy to find. A shopkeeper told us about Patterson’s Pub, suggesting they had the best food in town. She was right The pub was perfect, with an Irish theme, small warm and cozy, great beers on tap and truly wonderful food. I had a Bass from the tap, and Mo’s house Chardonnay was crisp and dry. Lobster bisque drizzled with very green virgin olive oil was a perfect beginning to fresh cod and sweet potato cross cut fries. Yum!!
Since daylight savings time ended it seems that it is way too dark at 6pm and settling in to a warm MoHo, cruising the blogs, and watching TV was a perfect way to end a great day.
More photos of our trip on the river are linked here.
September 28 Highway 12
A LOT of photos for this day of traveling Highway 12 are linked here>
Today was a driving day. We weren’t sure where we would end up, and only knew that the route would follow Scenic Highway 12, one of the most dramatically beautiful drives in the west. I have traveled this route before, on other trips, but each time it is a new experience. Each time the aspens on Boulder Mountain are a different shade of green or yellow, the canyons varying shades of clarity, red or hazy. Today there was a lot of haze and smoke and I wondered if possibly there were forest fires going on somewhere. We haven’t watched TV or listened to a radio in many days now, so I really have no idea what is going on out there.
When we left Torrey this morning it was windy and chilly enough for long pants and sweatshirts. Gasoline cost a staggering 3.29 per gallon, with the advertised 3.09 per gallon only for 85 octane ethanol, not something we want to put in the MoHo. We never would have made it up all those grades!
The road is two lane, very rough along much of the way, with many steep grades and curves, including the hair-raising 14 percent downgrade off the hogback. We thought we might like to hike Calf Creek Falls, both the Upper Falls and the Lower Falls have trailheads not far south of Boulder. But it was hot, much too hot to leave the cat in the MoHo
without air conditioning even if we could take the dog. The white hot heat made hiking seem much less attractive to us anyway, so we decided instead to make it a looking and driving day instead of a hiking day.
Bryce Canyon National Park is on this route as well, a few miles south of the highway ,and we decided against braving the crowds to be tourists at the overlooks. We both have hiked Bryce in the past, and most of the trails are steep and hot, even though gorgeous. Even outside the park, however, the colors of the hoodoos are every possible shade of orange sherbet, pink, cream, white, and red. It’s pretty to look at, but not inviting to hike because the rocks are soft red claystone, crumbly and shifting underfoot. My soul love is slickrock, and solid cliffs of Wingate, so I am content to enjoy the colors and the hoodoos and move on.
I spent part of the drive reading aloud to Mo about 90 different hikes in Canyon Country in the WOW hiking guidebook I bought back at the Capital Reef Inn. So many of the truly great hikes in this part of the plateau involve many miles of rough driving down the Hole in the Rock Road just north of Escalante. The road is the gateway for many famous slot canyons and the canyons of the Escalante River, but they will have to wait for another time for us. I read about backpacking the 38 miles through Pariah Canyon and wondered if I have a trip like that still in me. It’s all downhill, mostly on the canyon floor wading in the river, with slots so narrow you have to carry your pack in front of you to slide through. Maybe someday. It could be a lifetime trip like my Cataract Canyon raft trip turned out to be. Who knows. But today, driving highway 12, I added it to my bucket list.
After a short break and walk at Red Canyon, we turned south on Utah 89 toward Kanab, and then turned west on Highway 14 toward Cedar Breaks National Monument and Cedar City. At the top of the pass, again at 10,000 feet of so, is the lovely Navajo Lake where I camped a bazillion years ago when my kids were just little. It was a different time of year, with the green aspen I remember so clearly all now fiery yellow, gold, red, and peach. We stopped for the night at Duck Creek Campground in the Dixie National Forest since the Navajo Lakes camps were closed for the season. Tonight we had our last campfire in the mountains to accompany a card game before we watched the night sky darken.
I am amazed at how quickly the landscape shifts as we travel. It often isn’t a gradual change, suddenly we are in desert, then in spruce aspen high mountains, back to sage, red rocks to cream and buff clays, and back again. Tomorrow we will leave the mountains behind as we enter the Great Basin landscape of the west. Once over this last mountain, the basin and range will meet us on the way through Nevada and finally home to Klamath Falls where Basin and Range meets the Cascade Range.
A favorite book in my library is “Basin and Range’ by John McPhee. It’s the Sand Creek Almanac of the west, only better. If you ever read it, the wild spaces of Nevada will never bore you.
The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales 