9/6/2017 - Drive to Patricks Point State Park, California

Wednesday - Well, we are done with Oregon.  We loved our time there, all except for the smoke the last week.  Fortunately, we got up this morning to heavy sea mist coming in off the ocean, no smoke.  Winds must have finally changed.

We had a short drive today, so we decided to run into town and get the laundry caught up, especially since we had some wet things from yesterday's boat ride.  By the time we got that taken care of, de-camped, and fueled at Fred Meyers, it was 11:40 before we finally got started.  In Oregon, gas stations still have attendants who pump gas for you.  Some stations have self-service islands too, but not all of them.  So this was our last chance to take advantage of the attendants, as well as pay Oregon price instead of California price for gas ($2.889 with our 3 cent discount).

Heading south on the 101, there were a couple of things I wanted to get pictures of.  My camera did not want to focus, so my pictures aren't great, but I did get something.  The first one is a field of some "red" crop, which they had harvested since we drove through here the other day.  I have no idea what they were growing here, but it looked like it had been combined.

The other picture is of statues of horses at a horse stables.  The interesting thing about these metal statues is that they were made from horseshoes.  We had seen these twice before but not got a picture then either.

We crossed the California state line about 11:45, it's only about 5 miles from Brookings.  There is a fruit check here, but fortunately it was not doing inspections today, so I got to keep my peach, 2 oranges, 4 tomatoes, and grapes.  We passed a herd of elk (30-40) in the front yard of one ranch just outside Crescent City, but we saw a lot more elk in California just before we reached our campground.  And we saw 2 deer in our park (or the same one twice).  There's supposed to be bears around the park, so we will be on the alert.

We got checked in and found our campsite about 1:45.  Joe had to get some wood out to level us, so our front right tire is off the ground again.

And then he got his tinker toys out to get our step put together.  Since we are a little high, it took all his boards.

 Our drive was only 85 miles, - took us 2 hours, but we did have some road construction that we had to stop for 3 or 4 times.  We are dry camping in Patricks Point State Park, where there is an agate beach (of course, there's a steep trail downhill to it, which means it's uphill on the return -- we can't just drive to it). 

The Visitor Center here in the park was closing at 3:00 today, so as soon as we got set up, we drove up there and got some maps and information.  I even got an identification card for agates!!!  Then, of course, we took a drive!  We went looking for Trinidad to get some lunch, then stopped at the Trinidad State Beach and walked down to the water.  We didn't see any agates here. Then we drove around some scenic road that needed some work on it, came out in Westhaven, got back on the 101 and returned to the campground. 

We decided to drive around the park here a little, since we now had a map, checking out the scenic points which apparently all require hikes.  We walked down the agate trail a little bit, met a couple coming up and she had 6-7 rocks, some agates, in her pocket.  Then we headed back to camp.

We are in a pretty tight campsite.  In fact, Joe maneuvered it a little to get the slides out and allow us enough room to walk around.  Since we are dry camping, we pulled in, rather than backing in.

We got back to the RV about 5:00 and were in for the night.  It was about 64 degrees all day today, and sometimes we were driving through sea mist so heavy that Joe had to turn on the windshield wipers.  Seemed like a good night for chili, so that's what I made for dinner.  We weren't sure we would have phone or internet signals at our campsite, but we do, so that's good.  Now if we can just find some agates tomorrow!