We were heading from Klamath Falls to AZ along Hwy 395 which is on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. We stopped for a while in Bridgeport, CA which is close to the Bodie Ghost Town and also Mono Lake.
We visited both places back in 2013 but we wanted to visit again. Mono Lake looked different because there had been a lot of snow pack and rain this past winter. The lake was larger than before and a lot of the formations called Tufas were underwater. Back in 2013 we walked around and between lots of them but couldn’t do that this time without swimming!
Bodie, however, looks the same! It’s in a state of “arrested decay” meaning they maintain the buildings but don’t improve anything. It was pleasant to walk around and see the different buildings, homes, stores, a schoolhouse etc. We did not take a tour of the mine. We were able to take Chloe and she was very well behaved and enjoyed it too. Here are some pics:
We stayed for a week in Clarksville, TN and while there we found that there is a cavern right in town! So we decided to visit it.
This cavern system was used for over 1,000 years by native Americans and they did some rock painting. It is thought that the cavern was used for warrior initiation, where a warrior had to go in a certain distance, probably more than a mile. Some places were very tight and required crawling on bellies. Some of the symbols seem to represent a warrior on his side with a headdress on. Some seem to indicate the sun and moon. The cavern is still visited by native Americans elders who bring young tribe members to connect with their heritage. Because this cavern is still used by native Americans and is considered sacred there is no photography allowed inside and the tour is by flashlight (bring your own or buy one) so they can control the lighting to avoid further degradation of the ancient pictographs.
The cavern was discovered by white men before the Civil War and extensive digging during the war was done to expand parts of the cave to use for storage and for soldiers to rest and hide.
From the Civil War to the 1960s the cavern was owned by various people and visitors were encouraged to break off a piece of stalactite for a souvenior and to write on the walls. Lots of graffiti!
A country singer Roy Acuff, owned it for about 20 years in the 60s and 70s and held concerts at the opening which was enlarged and paved to be an ampitheatre.
The tour had a couple of spots where we all had to stoop over to get through, which made me nervous but I did ok. Unfortunately at one point where there was a slope and it was muddy I slipped and fell onto my left hip. Didn’t really hurt me and surprise! my right hip which had been hurting me for a few weeks stopped hurting! I had seen a chiropractor twice in the past couple of weeks but it didn’t seem to help. After a few days the pain in my right hip came back but one more trip to a chiropractor seemed to fix that, no more pain – so far.
One large room had weird shapes showing in the roof, I thought they were fish fossils. Turns out I was right but 10m years old!
It was very cool and humid inside the cave (around 56 degrees) and when we came out of the cave into the ampitheater where it was quite warm and very humid everyone’s glasses fogged up, so we all spent a few minutes cleaning our glasses so we could see again.
No pictures though! Not even any on the website from inside the cavern. Here’s a picture of the ampitheater:
We visited Chippewa Falls, WI for a week and while there we drove to a nearby lake, Lake Wissota. It’s very beautiful! There’s a very large state park along the shore with lots of campsites and day use areas. We got a picture of the lake from the shore, I don’t feel it does justice to the beauty of the area.
There’s also a lot of corn and soybean fields throughout this area. We also saw some sunflower fields and I snapped a picture of one of them.
As we hitched up to travel from Klamath CA to Florence OR the last thing I do is a walk around and brake check. I make sure everything inside and outside is ready to travel, and I stand behind the rig and signal to Jeff that the brake and turn light are working.
Well, that morning the left side light worked but the right side did not. As we had to hit the road early to get past the section of Hwy 101 that had suffered a rock slide and closed at 8am we just noted that right turns would not signal behind us and we took off.
A few miles into the trip we started getting warning messages that the trailer brake system was not working. That’s not good! But again, on Hwy 101 there’s not much in the way of repair shops. We did stop at one town and found a repair shop about to open. We asked the owner if he could have someone take a quick look, but he declined as he had a lot of work and a quick look could turn into a longer repair.
Jeff did pop off the taillight cover and it looked like the bulb had burned out. It was black. But we didn’t have a spare.
Hm… so we kept going and got to the next RV park without incident.
So we checked in and got to our spot. But… the leveling system wouldn’t work! Not with the remote, not from the control panel. That’s bad! We can’t unhitch and get level without the leveling system. We tried the slides… they wouldn’t work either!
So we sat in the truck and went online and found several articles on what could be wrong. The most common solution seemed to be a wiring problem in the harness at the king pin. So Jeff started working on it and found a loose wire! Yay! He was able to fix it so we could unhitch and get set up.
Then he went to a nearby auto parts store and got a new light bulb. He installed it and we did a brake test. Nope! Still didn’t work. Jeff tested the volts at the light and all the guards in the trailer but nothing looked amiss.
Next we went online and looked up why one brake/ turn light wouldn’t work. Aha! A fuse IN THE TRUCK! We have a trailering system and sure enough one of the fuses was blown. So back to the auto parts store for a fuse and finally all our problems are ended. Whew!
While staying in Florence, OR, we drove up the coast to see two landmarks.
One is “Thors Well”, a rock formation that looks like a well hole right at the waters edge in a very rocky area. As the tide gets higher, water would rush into the well from the hole beneath and erupt into the air like a geyser! And, when the tide gets even higher and flows over the rock above it drains into the hole like a sinkhole. There’s a walkway leading to the cliff edge with a viewing platform, and stairs going down to the rocky area where lots of people walk around on the rocks and get right up to the well. We chose to stay on the viewing platform (slippery rocks and I don’t mix well) but got some great photos of the well in action. Off to the side of Thors Well is another feature called the Spouting Horn. That’s a small hole in the rock where the surf would shoot up out of the hole like a geyser. We got some good photos of that too.
The other landmark is the Heceta Head Lighthouse. It’s built right on the cliffs edge with two very large rock formation in the surf right below it. There was a parking lot with a trail leading right up to the lighthouse but the lot was full, so we stopped at a couple of overlooks along Hwy 101 and got some photos. Here they are:
While we stayed in Klamath, we drove through a scenic drive in the Prairie Creek State Park. It’s beautiful and has several VERY BIG redwood trees viewed on an easy trail. There is a large meadow near the Visitor Center where a herd of elk often hangs out. They were there when we visited, the males with huge antlers were sitting and laying in one meadow, and there were several females in a meadow close by.
We walked a ways down the trail and got some good pictures of the big trees and of the elk too. Here they are:
We are staying for a week at Kamp Klamath right along the river in Klamath CA. This is about 2 miles from the Pacific Coast.
We have found that we have absolutely NO TMobile coverage in this area. No phone even except emergency calls. The RV park does have wi-fi which is helpful but it’s not real reliable. We checked the TMobile coverage map and found that there IS coverage right at the coast, so every day we are driving a few miles down a narrow road through the dark forest to get to a vista point on the coast. From there we can walk a little ways to a picnic area where we do get coverage. This is when we make any needed phone calls, check for messages and also check our email and whatever else we need to do online.
We stayed at another RV park just a ½ mile down the road a few years ago when we had Verizon and we had no problem with coverage.
So, TMobile – saying you have the best 5G coverage isn’t worth much when a customer hits an area that requires a drive and sitting at a picnic table just to make a phone call!!
TMobile coverage where we are staying
The road to the viewpoint for TMobile coverage
The viewpoint where we get TMobile – foggy and cold
We got to the coast in Arcata, CA. It’s wonderful here after the heat of Coarsegold and Pollock Pines where it was in the 90s and 100s every day and barely cooled off at night. Here we have a marine layer every day and it only got as warm as 70 a couple of days. A few days it was actually chilly all day until mid-afternoon. One reason for that is we are under a huge tree and the sun only starts to hit the rig about 3pm. What a nice change!!
While in this area we took a few drives to see the country. On one drive we went to Blue Lake, which is really a wide spot on the Mad River. We drove along it for a ways but in the area where we drove the access to the lake would have meant scrambling down some rocks to get to the level of the lake, and as Laddy hasn’t been feeling well lately we didn’t want him to exert himself so we only looked out at it from the road. It’s beautiful and very unspoiled. Here’s a picture:
On another drive we went along the coast. Arcata is at the north end of the Arcata Bay, and we drove out to the coastline through two small towns – Manila and Samoa. Interesting names! Samoa was originally Brownsville, and as the harbor is similar to that of Pago Pago in the Samoa Islands, and because of a crisis there in the 1890s the name was changed. From Samoa you can drive to the Dunes Recreation Area and there’s a bridge from Samoa across 2 small islands to Eureka.
On one of the two small islands there is a marina and a restaurant where we had dinner at the Café Marina & Woodleys Bar. Great food and live music too! Here’s a picture of the marina taken from our table:
And another drive took us north to the small town of McKinleyville. Hway 101 is right along the beach for a few miles in this area and there was a vista point that looked down to the mouth of the Mad River. It runs parallel to the coast for a way before it turns to enter the ocean. There’s no beach access here because of the river, even though it appears very shallow. We looked down at the mouth of the river and were surprised to see lots of seals on the sandbar. Here’s a picture:
There are many beautiful lakes up in the mountains to the east of Pollock Pines. While staying in Pollock Pines we took 2 drives up to different lakes in the nearby mountains.
Wright’s Lake is within the El Dorado Natl Forest. While Pollock Pines is at about 3,900 feet and was 96 degrees when we left for our drive, Wrights Lake is at 6,969 feet and was 79 degrees. What a difference!
The drive up to the lake was beautiful, lots of pines and other types of trees, some wildflowers were in bloom and the views at various points were great! When we got to the lake we discovered that there were several primitive campgrounds around the lake and we saw lots of people enjoying the cooler weather at the lake.
Here are some pictures we took during our drive up to the lake:
Our second drive was to IceHouse Reservoir and nearby Union Valley Reservoir. They are both beautiful as well, and at about the same elevation as Wright’s Lake. The drive up was very pretty, and the reservoirs are very popular with locals in the summertime. Here are some pictures we took at IceHouse Reservoir:
Not travelling – but we did take a quick getaway to Morro Bay for a few days.
We’ve been to Morro Bay and San Luis Obispo before but it’s been several years. So, when we had the chance to get away for a few days we thought that would be a great destination.
We had a great time – the weather was perfect! We were only there 2 days but we saw the big attraction – Morro Rock – as well as taking walks through nearby Elfin Forest and the Marina and Morro Bay Estuary.
Elfin Forest is made up of scrub oaks and pygmy oaks which typically get to only 6-7 feet tall. There’s a boardwalk going through the forest to protect the natural habitat. We found one grove of larger trees but much of the area we could see over the top of the trees.
We had several great views of the estuary from Elfin Forest, and views of Morro Rock from part of it. As we were nearing the end of the walk we chatted with a very nice man and his dog who walked there a lot – he told us there was a herd (?) of feral pigs living in the forest and asked if we had seen or hear them. Luckily we had not or Laddy would have wanted to go chase them!
We also spent the afternoon on the beach right up against Morro Rock where we watched surfers and birds and waited for sunset so Jeff could get a picture of the sun setting behind Morro Rock. He was able to get it right in a cleft of the rock that matched a pictures he took last time we were here!
The next day we walked a hiking trail around the marina and bordering the other side of the estuary. It was a very pleasant walk until we saw that we were approaching a large mostly dead pine tree with large vultures on every branch! They watched us approach and only a few took off. Some of them spread their wings as we passed by which was very interesting. They are BIG birds!
We also enjoyed checking out the local restaurants for our meals. All in all Morro Bay is a great little coastal community, off the main highway through the area and still has a lot of small town vibe to it.
