Friday - Today, we decided to head down to Eureka first thing and "do" that town, then come back and try our beachcombing and agate-hunting in the afternoon. High tide was 1:45 p.m., so we wanted to wait until after that, in case our beach got completely covered during high tide.
Our first item was the Blue Ox Millworks and Historic Park, a still-operating millworks, using antique equipment to manufacture authentic Victorian-style architectural millwork. This is a place with a lot of potential but really needs a good overhaul. They ship all over the U.S., have a program using veterans and at-risk high school kids, but it is really showing its age. The Redwood in the Redwood Shrine here was over 1000 years old.
The building was over 100 years old too, and it looked it.
The owner, Eric, was working, and our tour guide and demonstrator, Rainbow, showed us how some of the human-operated equipment worked. Their tooling includes the largest collection of operating Barnes Brothers Equipment Company human-powered tools in the world.
We saw one other guy there, besides Eric, but we walked through the buildings and looked at some of the equipment on our own. Joe took a turn at the pottery wheel. There was also a blacksmith shop, a print shop, a paint shop, a foundry, and probably some other things.
From there, we headed across the bridge to Woodbury Island. We drove the island, looked at the harbor, Joe walked out to the sea wall and we could barely see some fishing boats coming in through the mist.
We stopped back in town at a store called "Picky Picky Picky," which turned out to be mostly Carhartt and sports stuff, then walked next door to an Army surplus store. Our next attraction was the Humboldt Botanical Gardens, a 44.5 acre garden next door to the College of the Redwoods. They were getting ready for a party tomorrow, but we did walk through the pretty flowers and plants.
Its specialty is rare species Rhododendrons, but since they were not in bloom we did not make the hike up the hill to see those gardens. Instead, we spent a little time in the butterfly house. They seemed to really like Joe. This is a black admiral butterfly. They also had beautiful monarch butterflies flying around.
And we learned something. Joe got to help open a box of butterflies they had just received in the mail -- these were Painted Ladies. They ship butterflies in little zip-lock plastic bags, 2 per bag, on a ice pack like you would put in your freezer. There must have been 9 or 12 bags, so 18 or 24 new butterflies. They are completely flattened, but once they are shook out of the bag, they spread their wings and start moving around.
We left there and were officially done with Eureka, so we headed back to our neck of the woods to go agate-hunting. We decided to go to the Big Lagoon, rather than Agate Beach in our campground, because it was much easier to get to -- just a short walk from the parking lot. There were lots and lots of pretty rocks, and we quickly gathered some, thinking maybe some of them were agates. But we had an Agate ID card with us, so we weren't sure. Then Joe found one that was, for sure, an agate. So that was exciting. A while later, I found one too. Then we hooked up with another couple, also agate-hunting, and they gave us a lesson on agates, and even pointed out a couple in the rocks.
This was a very pebbly beach, lots of pretty rocks. Even Joe has become a rockhound.
The sea mist was with us all day, so we didn't have to divide our attention by looking for whales. Joe wore his backpack, so I unloaded my sack of rocks twice into his backpack, and still had more in my bag when we left.
We came back to the RV and spread out all our finds on our picnic
table. We ended up with 12 agates for sure, and another 4 or 5
possibilities. We need to go into town to the museum and buy an agate
book tomorrow.
These are the agates so far.
After we finished messing with the rocks, we got cleaned up and went into our little town of Trinidad, restaurant-hopping. There are not very many choices here, and the restaurants don't have very broad menus, but they do have pretty steep prices. We went in and out of two, and ended up at the deli in the casino after we decided against their dining room too. So Joe had a chili dog and I had a hotdog, we played for about an hour, and then came back to the RV in time to shut off the generator before quiet time.
So, our plan for tomorrow -- go back to this beach about 6:30 in the morning, where we will meet our new friends from today (Dwayne and Allison), and see if we can double our find. They say early in the morning, right after high tide, the agates just sort of glisten in the sand. We will see. We spent about 2 1/2 hours walking the beach this afternoon, and really enjoyed it, so I hope we can get up early and get down there before the rest of the beachcombers find all the good ones.
