Thanksgiving in Klamath
It's been a very special week here at Klamath. We landed here in a metaphorical heap, exhausted and full of nerves from our hair-raising drive down CA-199. But then in the subsequent week I only worked two days, with the rest off for Thanksgiving. This was much-needed. Wednesday this week we did basically nothing. I think the we made waffles? That's about it. It was rainy, and we mostly were stuck in the RV, which was fine with us grown ups, though the kids were "so bored." They were very excited to clean off the outsides of the living room slide windows, which I guess was better than sitting inside. It involved spraying the hose, always a popular activity.
Thursday was Thanksgiving, and the forecast was for fine weather. We found a hike to do in the morning, called Fern Canyon. It looked to be a very special place, often busy but worth it. It's a stream that's carved out 50-foot vertical walls on either side that drip just the right amount of water to grow a solid wall of ferns on both sides. You can hike right up the stream bed if you've got rain boots, and be down in the bottom of the canyon. It's 8 miles down a rutty dirt road with two stream crossings, so the drive there is not casual. Sheila has plenty of clearance and torque, but a very stiff on-road suspension and tires. It was a tiring and bumpy ride, but safe.
The canyon itself was worth every bump and splash. It reminded me of those rainforest exhibits at the zoo, with clear running water under rocks covered in moss, ferns, and dripping trees - except no hand of man created this, it's no imitation. It's not curated by anyone except nature, and merely protected from damage by man. I could see why it was so widely imitated. The beauty of it was so profound, so clean - it's like your childhood memories of wild forests and jungles come to life. The potency of it was astounding.
We were there in the morning and as we came out the upstream side of the canyon and onto the return trail up in the forest, the sun streaming through the trees raised mists of steam off the trees. A woodpecker hunted in the morning light. All of us were stirred into a meditative stillness for several minutes on the trail. We have waited a very long time for exactly this.
Fern Canyon is right across from a fine beach access and even some tent camping sites. We had packed a lunch, so we picked it up from the truck and walked out to the beach to eat it and watch the surf. The beaches here look just like a typical Oregon coast beach, but so far have been hardly windy at all. It is a pleasant adjustment for us Oregonians: we can just plop down in the sand and eat lunch without having to choose between wrangling a shelter or eating sandy food. So after feasting on the surf and sunshine, feeling like we just ate a 4-course meal of natural beauty, we packed it in to bounce and crawl with Sheila back to the highway, and get a turkey in the oven.
Yes, turkey, in our bitty RV oven. We ordered a half-turkey at a market in Eugene last week. We were pleased to find it actually fit on our quarter-sheet pans, and roasted up nicely. Kristin was a champ and made nearly all the thanksgiving dishes we might have, except the pumpkin pie, because nobody had any canned pumpkin to buy. The kids and I washed the truck while K put dinner together. After a month of rainy travel and dirt roads, sheila was a mess.
It was a Thanksgiving like no other, for us or anyone else this year I suppose. So many were separated from family out of necessity, some of ours included. My parents canceled their planned visit to my sister's place in Spokane, which I thought was very responsible of them. The COVID numbers are super super bad on the west coast, so holing up is the right move. We have a great deal to be thankful for, especially this year. To be eating together, healthy, in such a beautiful place, at the beginning of such a big adventure, is a tremendous blessing in any year, and an overwhelming one in 2020.
Friday it was time to go grocery shopping. In Eugene we were still able to use our preferred Fred Meyer pickup setup, but here we had to actually go in the store and find everything we needed ourselves. Obviously this is going to be normal most of the time going forward, but it's a new muscle for us. We scoped out a fancy food co-op near a Safeway in Crescent City, figuring that between the two stores we could get everything we needed. And, if we were going as far as Crescent City, we figured we should get a hike in, so we scoped out Stout Grove which is about 15 minutes north of there. It's a stand of colossal redwoods near the Smith River that is an easy walk in after a 1-mile dirt road to the trailhead.
This was sort of the iconic Redwoods NP experience. Walking at the feet of giants, getting a crick in your neck trying to stare up at them, walking alongside fallen redwoods the length of a city block. They reminded me of nothing so much as elephants, the way the organic waves in their bark ripple, the way they outgrow and will outlive all of us standing there. Fascination with the "biggest" becomes such a short-lived thing when you stand in a place like that. After 30 minutes in there it's surprisingly easy to forget. "Holy CATS that's a big tree" becomes "welp, it's a forest" after a bit. (Could be the hunger, we were all kind of hangry.) I was surprised to learn that Stout Grove was donated in 1929. This was somebody's, like, yard. Feels incomprehensible. But then, at one time there were 2,000,000 acres of wild redwoods this size at one time. Groves like this are now unique and completely irreplaceable. I wonder if we will protect them long enough.
Our drive to and from Crescent City took us down a section of US-101 and CA-199 that we had previously hauled Solomon, and it was a funny contrast to drive it without a trailer. We still have a pretty big truck so it's not a fun cruise through the twisties, but it was kind of relaxing compared to the stressfest of towing through there. The weather was fine, and we could take the viewpoint turnouts heading south.
Today was a clean and repair day, much needed after 3 days of rest and adventure. Like any house that goes down the freeway every week or two, the RV needs maintenance. Today was re-sealing the kitchen sink again. The caulk failed from our first attempt from back in Lynnwood, I'm not sure why. But there was nothing for it but to drop the sink again, clean it off again, perhaps more thoroughly this time, and mount it again. This time I rigged up the truck jack and some blocks to press it hard against the bottom of the counter while it cures. If this doesn't work I'll have someone else do it the third time. Kristin was busy with her tasks - re-hanging the mask hook rack for the third time (that rack hates command strips), adding shoe storage under the bed, cleaning the bathrooms and outside stairs. I refilled a propane tank and put conditioner on the truck sunroof seals. Important stuff, and now we're pretty tired.
Tomorrow will be our first proper Sunday sabbath in a month. We've been traveling or working every Sunday since we left the house. We've been able to attend church (sort of), but usually as soon as it's over we're hitting the road. But not tomorrow. Church in the morning, then only restful things the rest of the day. I have to go back to work Monday so I want to rest as well as I can.
We still haven't figured out where we're going next. We had hoped to have that sorted early this week but between COVID closures, travel fatigue and overall uncertainty we haven't been able to cobble together an itinerary we can commit to. California is... complicated. We had some neighbors here last night from the area, and their take was to just go ahead and breeze through California and come back in a year or two when COVID has blown over. We're just next door in Oregon and CA’s an easy state to visit. You could spend a whole summer in here without trying hard, there's so much to see... when it's open. But in Nov and Dec 2020 most of it is closed, and even if we worked hard to see all we could it would be a pale shadow of what's possible. Probably better to high-tail it out to the desert, which is always open.
