We were out on the road again today. We departed from Harris Beach SP in Brookings, OR, and settled in for the entire drive to Hiouchi, maybe 25 miles away in neighboring California. We are a bit sad about leaving Oregon. We drove into Oregon from Washington on August 22 and, other than wash days or crummy weather, we have been treated to stunning scenery every day. Some of the scenery was viewed through some nasty smoke because of this year’s horrible fires but it was pretty anyway. There’s no sales tax. The state parks offer magnificent scenery and most of them are free to visit and inexpensive to camp. The roads are a bit lumpy, though.
We headed south through Brookings where there is ample scenery right in town to make some folks drive up lamp posts. There is also an abundance of recreational marijuana sales outlets, perhaps because Brookings is the first town north of the border with a state with no current recreational commercial sales. Hmmm. We crossed the Chetco into the town of Harbor before heading into some gorgeous coastal plain, crossing into CA. A couple miles later, we turned southeast up the Smith River on CA-197 toward Jedediah Smith Redwoods State and Federal Parks. Shortly, but not too shortly, we noted a sign adjacent to the pavement that cautioned idiots, like me, to avoid using this route if towing a moderate-length trailer. It was too late to back up so we charged on blindly. It worked out okay but that is because there was hardly any traffic coming the other way so I could use both skinny lanes.
After a half dozen miles, we turned mostly east on CA-199, an effective and renowned killer of lane discipline violators and mobile texters. Fortunately, we only had to go about 3 miles before pulling into the Redwood Meadows RV Park in Hiouchi, pronunciation unknown. It seems to be a nice park with amply sized RV spaces, full hookups, good wifi, many washing machines in the laundry, cable TV and, most importantly, it is located right in Jedediah Smith Redwoods.
After setting up and sitting around for a bit, we hopped back in the truck and took a drive down nearby Howland Hill Road. It is initially a wide highway with a double yellow down the middle but that goes away right before it narrows to one lane which is followed by the paving changing to gravel. However, there are lots of turnouts and you’ll need them because the road passes through an absolutely amazing grove of old growth Redwoods. The massive trees would easily leave a stump you could park an F-250 on top of. Some of the trees have become so chubby that they have joined with adjacent monsters leaving 300 foot tall columns of wood 50 feet or more in circumference. Down on the road, where us mortals remain, there is little daylight and our automatic headlights stayed on for the entire drive through the park. We will be using that skinny gravel road for all our trips into town.
We still had some time left before dark so we took a spin down the coast a few miles to Enderts Beach overlook which offers a great view north of a long, curving beach with Crescent City, the Lighthouse and a shark’s mouth full of seastacks in the distance and an equally terrific view to the south of sheer rock cliffs and more seastacks. We should have reserved a longer time here. It is awful pretty.
We took pix of some neat stuff today. Check it out. Click here