97/2017 - Driving back to Orick

Thursday - We are dry-camping here, no hook-ups at all, and when I tried to start the generator this morning, the house batteries were too low to start it.  So Joe started the motor, and they came right on.  We run his sleep machine off the battery at night, and last night we had phones plugged in, so we will try to have our phones charged before we go to bed. 

We woke up to raindrops this morning, which changed our plans for the day - a beach day looking for agates.  That wasn't in the cards for today. .   So we adjusted, and just made a drive back to Orick, to the Redwood Forest.  The rain continued to mist off and on, but it was really damp, with sea mist too.  We drove back to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove, but it was a 1.5 mile hike, and we didn't want to get wet, so we just drove back out. 

We drove on the Elk Viewing area at Davison Road, where we saw elk yesterday, continuing on this road to Gold Bluffs Beach. There was a hike back here too, to Fern Canyon, a mile-long box canyon, but again we didn't want to get wet.  We did see 5 bull elk when we turned onto this road, one standing and 4 still laying down.  Joe spotted the racks of those laying down, but then, one by one, they stood up. 

The "beach road" was separated from the beach by dunes and foliage and we couldn't really even see it, so that was a waste of time.  But on our way back, just before the highway, we found our elk again.   There was probably a herd of 30 or so, with several young ones, and one massive bull in charge of everything. 

 We were only about 30 yards from them, and they were totally unconcerned about all the people watching.

We finally tore ourselves away from here and headed back south, to Trinidad again.  The rain picked up a little through here.  We got lunch, then walked over to the Memorial Lighthouse, a replica of the still-functioning Trinidad Head Lighthouse on nearby Trinidad Head.  The ocean view, with the sea mist, and sun trying to shine through the clouds, was really picture-perfect.

Joe's panoramic shot.

We made a stop at the market here, then headed back toward camp.  The rain had pretty much stopped, but there was still a lot of sea mist hanging in the trees.

We took a side trip in the campground to Palmers Point Road and walked out to the overlook.  This is supposed to have a lot of tidepools, with a lot of sea creatures in them, so we will probably have to come back here and hike down to the beach.  On a nicer day.

And we saw 2 deer on our road, where we saw them yesterday.  This time they were right beside the road.

We got back about 2:30, and ran the generator for a while to get eveything charged up.  This is a test-run for us, because we will be dry-camping in Grass Valley in a couple of weeks. 

We saw some wildlife today, otherwise, we had a pretty uneventful day.  We hope to get down to the beach tomorrow, and will probably drive down to Eureka.  The temperature was around 62 all day, and really damp, not inducive to beach-combing.   But I think these old redwoods love days like this!