Oregon Caves is situated in the northern part of the Siskiyou Mountains. We did a 90 minute guided tour of this a single marble cave which is 3.5 mile long, of which we walked 1.5 miles,has 526 stairs and the temperature inside the cave was 7degrees Celsius, the same all year round. After our cave tour we drove down to caves creek camping ground where we spent the night choosing a site right along side the creek. From the caves we headed back to the coast to Crescent City, which is in California . Yes! we crossed another border having to stop for an agriculture inspection.
Leaving Oregon behind we continued down the pacific coast, through redwood state forest stopping off at the Mystery of trees. This is a tourist attraction, where Paul Bunyan, a 49 ft tall statue and his 35 foot tall friend, Babe the blue Ox welcomed us with a wave as we arrived. There was almost a mile of interpretative trail to walk through which is devoted to the mythology of Paul, a logger from the turn of the century. The walk was beautiful through the redwood forest. We took the sky trail ( gondola ) over the canopy of trees to the observation deck at the top and then walked the 1 mile steep trail back down the mountain. Areas of this walk were roped to help assist with the descent. There were amazing redwood carvings all done with a chain saw and of course redwood gifts could be purchased from the gift store. The largest tree in the redwood forest was the brotherhood tree - 19 ft in diameter and 326 ft high. A great way to spend a few hours. Continuing on redwood highway we saw lots of elk grazing along the roadside. Our camp for the night was in an RV park . As we cooked our BBQ dinner hummingbirds buzzed around our site.
We detoured the following morning following the famous scenic route “The Avenue of the giants” This 31 mile route was originally the Old highway and runs parallel with the freeway. This road is surrounded by the Humboldt Redwood State Park which has the largest remaining redwoods in the world. These enormous trees hugged the roadside as we followed the scenic Eel River . There were opportunities to stop, to walk the forest and to view the information booths. What a magnificent drive. It was then back to the coast. We wound our way along this slow and in many places very narrow road down to San Francisco, crossing the Golden Gate Bridge into the city. We intended to do a walk across the bridge but could not stop as the viewing areas were closed so we followed Navman directions into the city heading for an RV park. When we arrived at "you have reached your destination" the park was not there. It was peak hour so we slowly moved with the traffic right on out of this busy city. Guess we cant do it all so that will be something for next time.... Many areas of the coastline were fogged in but what we were able to see was beautiful. Driving along the bay seeing the oyster racks and fishing boats and the areas of farmland reminded us of home. We were glad when we had stopped for lunch with only 40 mile to to San Francisco. A long hard road to drive in an RV. Maybe the reason we did not see many. Our original plans were to continue further on down the coast to Los Angeles but that has now changed. We are heading to Los Angeles via Yosemite National park.... | 
No comments:
Post a Comment