Blog

Sporadic dispatches from the hinterlands.

Redwood Coast

We’re finally starting to get more comfortable with going out into the world. We postponed trips because of Covid, and then because of the wildfire smoke blanketing the state. We moved our planned vacation from the Sierra to the Oregon/Northern California coast, searching for clean air. We switched from camping to staying in motels, because Joy had to do a little remote work.

It worked beautifully. After we planned our trip, the weather forecast changed from sun and smoke to intermittent rain; we were glad to be able to stay out after dark and come back to a warm, dry room. It mostly rained at night, and we enjoyed some great days out there.

Our itinerary:

  • 10/15/21: Quick visit to Marvin in Wilton.

  • 10/16: Colusa National Wildlife Refuge; stayed in Redding (which was nice!).

  • 10/17 through 10/19: Explored area around Brookings, Oregon, especially the Samuel H. Boardman Scenic Corridor.

  • 10/20 through 10/21: Stayed in Eureka, California: Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Arcata Marsh National Wildlife Refuge, Humboldt Marsh National Wildlife Refuge.

  • 10/22: Drove home, just before what turned out to be a record-setting deluge that caused widespread flooding and road closures!

Garrapata

We made a day trip down to Garrapata State Park to take a walk on the Soberanes Canyon Trail. Although we just had an extremely dry winter, there were some wildflowers to be seen, and we grabbed some quick photos to help us identify and remember them.

Here are some of the resources we used to identify these organisms:

CalPhotos

Art Shapiro's Butterfly Site

Butterflies and Moths of North America

Wildflowersearch.org

CalFlora

Lupines on the coast

We went exploring up the coast to the State Beaches of San Mateo County. We hoped to find some good birding in riparian areas, but ended up wandering along deer trails on the coastal terraces. After walking through a couple of miles of grassland and coyote brush, we came to a sandy hillside filled with lupines (and, surprisingly, badger burrows).

That’s Joy in the distance, with a hazy Highway 1 far below.

Stanislaus National Forest

All our camping plans for the past year got 2020’d. There was that pandemic, and then California was on fire for a while. After canceling plans due to Covid-19 and extremely bad air quality, staying home became a habit. Finally, this Spring, we started feeling ready to go camping again. There was still snow on the high mountains, but I wanted to have a look at some lower-elevation areas on the western slope of the Sierra. We loaded up the truck and headed to the Stanislaus National Forest.

We started on Evergreen Road, the road that goes to Hetch Hetchy off Highway 120. From there, we wandered off onto some Forest Service roads, crossing Tuolumne Canyon, and coming out onto Highway 108. The scenery was a mix of rock-strewn rivers, granite and old burn debris. The forest roads started out good, but deteriorated as we approached the Clavey River. The stretch into and up out of that canyon was badly washed out in places, leaving my tires uncomfortably close to the crumbling dirt edges, above a thousand feet of steep canyon wall. Unwilling to return on the dangerous shelf road, we fought our way out the other side through narrow rutted roads overgrown with brush; my truck came out scratched and dented. The only other vehicles were a few of those little four-wheelers. Only later did I discover that the Forest Service has decided to stop maintaining these roads for full-sized vehicles. We won’t go there again.

This wasn’t the most auspicious start to our revived camping career, but we were glad to go out breathe the fresh air, listen to the birds, and watch the moon. I hope it won’t be long before we’re out again — but with better roads.

March 26-28, 2021