California

From Portland, Oregon we hit the road and headed for the Oregon coast. We traveled down the notorious Pacific Coast Highway (101) and rode right along the Pacific Ocean coastline all the way into California. We stopped in Newport, Oregon and had lunch at Mo’s, which was another great Diner, Drive-Ins, and Dives gem in the rough. We ate what the locals suggested, which was shrimp melt sandwiches with a side of clam chowder and it was very good. We checked out the local fishing village and then headed towards the small town of Florence, Oregon. Florence is home to the Sea Lion caves, which were a highly recommended visit from the locals. The Sea Lion Caves is the world's largest cave habitat for wild sea lions. The cave is about 200 feet below ground and consists of a two acre naturally formed rock cave that provides shelter from the often harsh Pacific Ocean. That evening we made it to the California state line and set up shop in a very shady campground in Crescent City. The night was very interesting. Our neighbors were not fellow campers, they lived there full time and were very colorful people. The campground was also conveniently located directly across from a port. This particular port featured an obnoxiously loud fog horn that no joke sounded every 10 seconds throughout our entire stay. It was literally like someone was hiding under the camper with an air horn that sounded 6 times per minute!

The next day we fled the Meth Inn RV Park like two bats out of hell and headed into the Redwood Forest. Our first stop in the Redwoods was at the Trees of Mystery. This park consists of a one mile loop that features the largest and most unique trees in the park. The largest tree was 19 feet in diameter and some of them towered over 300 feet tall. The park also had a skytrail gondola ride that went thru the redwood canopy to an observation deck at the top of the Klamath back country. After leaving the Trees of Mystery we toured thru the rest of the park and made a last minute decision to head towards Yosemite National Park. We didn’t really realize how far away Yosemite was, but 14 hours and 60 gallons of diesel later we arrived at the campground. We made another one of our famous middle of the night appearances and woke half the campground up as we blindly finagled the rig into its new home for the next 36 hrs.

We caught a few hours sleep and the next morning headed into Yosemite National Park. Yosemite is basically a park of granite rock. Most of the park was carved out by glaciers many years ago and now features rock formations from 2000 foot vertical shear cliffs to spires, domes, and massive piles of boulders. The most interesting part of our Yosemite adventure was a hike we embarked upon to Mirror Lake. At the trail head we learned a massive rock avalanche had wiped out the top .3 mile of the trail. We decided to forge ahead and just turn around once we reached that point. We hiked an hour or so and reached the barricade prohibiting entering the destruction of the avalanche. We also learned smaller avalanches have continued to occur frequently after the major one back in March. Being two young bachelors with nothing to lose, we decided to slip around the barricade and see what this avalanche business was all about. It was absolutely amazing. Massive amounts of rock, ranging from bucket sized to the size of a dump truck, had fallen from 1800 feet up and totally wiped out a forest of giant pine trees. We crawled around the wreckage and it literally looked like someone had dumped a box of snapped off toothpicks, only the toothpicks were 100’ tall 3-6 foot diameter pine and sequoia trees.

Today we are back in the rig and headed to the wonderful city of Las Vegas! Since we departed Idaho 5 days ago we have spent 48 hrs. in the cab of the truck, covered 2200 miles of ground, and dumped 190 gallons of diesel fuel into this beast! To say the least we are very much ready to stay put for a few days and give the road a brief break. Stay tuned for our tales in Vegas!

-Cheggy