Blur

It's all starting to become one. I spent about two weeks in the Redwoods between Jed Smith, Crescent City, Eureka and Ukiah. It's a hard place to leave. Hopefully next time I'm there I'll be far enough removed from the Park Ranger's lecture about how we cut down 95% of the millennial Redwoods. There was one 1500 year old tree he had a picture of that was growing over the top of a fallen 2000 year old tree. They used pictures of it to advertise how long the wood will last because the one underneath was still solid. In the second picture he showed, you could see that they had cut down the second tree so now it was just a stump on a log. But, I already wrote about all that.


Once I left Jed Smith I only went about 9 miles down to Crescent City where I decided to stop and have a real breakfast, something I hadn't done up to that point in the trip. While I was sitting there I checked my disc golf app and it turned out I had just passed a beach course about a mile back. It seemed silly having only gone 9 miles but I decided to pull into the RV park across the street and go play the course. After a week of boondocking, I needed to dump my tanks and charge up the batteries anyway so the idea of stopping hitting a beach course wasn't a hard sell. On my third day at the park, when I went to pay for my fourth, I asked what the weekly rate would have been and for barely more than the cost of the extra day I already owed, I turned into my first week long stay anywhere in the RV (other than Fest and Burning Man).

Crescent City is an interesting dichotomy epitomized when I was photographing the beautiful sunset on the beach right up until the point where the drunk guy came literally tumbling down the sand dune next to me, half gallon wine bottle still in-hand. The scenery there is amazing! The coast there is like nothing I have seen anywhere else with it's massive rocks (islands?) and wild crashing waves. I met some of the most welcoming people you'd ever want to meet while I was there, but of course the first interaction I had with someone in town I wasn't buying either food or a campsite from was a guy who began our conversation by telling me that he had just gotten out of jail and that's why he was enjoying his 10am beer on the jetty next to the tee box I was standing on. It's also the first place I got a real taste of California's tweeker problem. According to my sister, a lot of it is due to other states practicing what she calls, “Greyhound Therapy” where a state will close down a mental institution and give all the inmates/patients bus tickets to California.


So now you're asking yourself why would I have stayed there a week? Especially when places like Jed Smith and Whistlers Bend and even Moab didn't get a whole week? Well I gotta tell ya, there's just something about Jefferson... er... um... Way Northern California. I ended up meeting the guy that designed the beach disc golf course which not only led to several days of frisbee throwing lessons and my first ever win at Dubs (doubles), but I also got to go see his house up in the mountains and climb around on some massive ancient redwood stumps (I didn't stray from the trails much at Jed Smith, I'm kindof a stickler for the rules ya know). He made 4 of the nuttiest pizzas I have ever eaten, I can't even remember all the different toppings that were piled on top of them, Elk and asparagus and pineapple and curry and and and... And then a bunch of people came over and we read a play! Yup, disc golfing made me a thespian. Well, for an evening anyway. A truly delightful evening. One for which I have to reach back a couple of years and thank Burning Man for. Learn to accept thee gifts the universe brings you. My week in Crescent City was a gift on many levels.
It was also the first place I took my bike off the carrier and went for a ride since the playa too. I tried in Oregon but I got nowhere because it can't go uphill. I was standing on the cranks and we just stopped moving. But the gradual hills along the coast were no problem and the mostly flat city area made the bike a great way to get around. I really do need to look into an electric hub though if it's going to be my mode of local transportation.


Eureka!!
Ok, Samoa. After my week in Crescent City I couldn't resist the call of Humboldt County any longer. I thought I was going to stop at Trees of Mystery on the way there but I ended up driving straight on through. I headed to a campground way out on the peninsula of Humboldt Bay. I stayed there one night amongst all the sketchy patrons and then headed over to the disc golf course right up the road for a quick round before going to meet my friends in Eureka. As seems to be the way out here, the course was pretty hard to navigate. Tee signs and pin numbers get vandalized by the non disc golfer park patrons (tweekers, drunks, homeless), fairways cross, the closest tee box to the pin is not necessarily the next tee box, etc. So after I got confused around the 5^th or 6^th hole I played I was ready to bail and just head to town. But I saw a local playing the course and decided to wait and ask him where some holes were. Ended up playing a couple of rounds with the dude. I never would have found the last hole on the other side of the creek and I had thrown at the wrong pin on a couple of holes in the middle. As again seems to be the way out here, if you can happen upon a local to show you the course your experience will be WAY better. So it was with a smile on my face and not frustration that I headed into town.


Eureka!!
No, for real this time. I pulled into town and let my people know I was there. A short time later I was enjoying my first Pho. The next afternoon, one of my friends came and picked me up and we went to Arcata and played The Redwood Curtain. There are not enough letters in the word WOW to express what an amazing disc golf course that is! I've hit one helluva lot of trees in the year since I started playing this game but there is something downright mystical about hitting a tree that's a thousand years old. Not to mention climbing up a ten foot high stump and throwing from inside of it! The highlight, however, was almost acing their pond shot! And it's on video!!
The next night we went out for the monthly Eureka Arts event; street musicians, open artists studios, all sorts of good stuff... Even a zombie crawl going on! And, in the disc golf is a small world realm, the zombie in the pope outfit came up and asked me if I had gotten to play The Curtain... Yup, it was the guy I had played the other course with a couple of days prior! As if that wasn't cool enough, one of my friends is studying with a local Artists whose studio we went into and checked out. He invited us to come back the next day and paint! Unfortunately, he got food poisoning at the open studio, everyone had food out, saw way too many people walk up to the tables, scratch their nose, and then start digging around in the pile of cheese for just that right slice. But my friends invited me to their house, I painted for most of the afternoon and then got to watch some modern glass blowing and even try it out!! Truly delightful people I'm quite fortunate to have met.


The next day it was time to hit the road and get to my sisters house before she went out of town (I had the timing of her trip wrong, but that's jumping ahead a little). The Vogue had other ideas. I ended up at a shop a couple of blocks from the RV park for most of the day with a flat tire. Turned out the o-ring on the valve stem on one of the inner rear tires was bad. Now I'm not gonna say it happened on the way to Burning Man when the guys that replaced the alternator torqued on the valve stem with a crowbar to get an air hose on it, but that mighta been the last straw. At some point I need to get a set of heavy duty valve extenders so that it's easier to check and nothing has to get bent or pried. Once I was back on the road after the cheapest repair ever ($54 + the $5 part, and the kid spent a couple of hours getting wheels on and off) I straddled a piece of a shredded truck tire on the highway that left one side of my Ultraguard (the giant mudflap across the back of the RV) flapping in the breeze. So it was a short day of driving and I stopped in Ukiah where I had the world's greatest chicken fried steak at the Highway 101 Bar and Grill. It's so big I didn't even have to order an extra one to go. And it's soo good I savored it for 4 meals! So the next morning I woke up and did a quick fix on the mudflap by drilling a couple of holes and moving a two of the bolts and then headed off to one of the local disc golf course there for a quick round. Unlike the other courses I'd been playing lately, I was completely alone on most of this course. Crossing fairways weren't a problem, nor baskets right next to tee pads and there wasn't an addict to be seen. Well, except the one addicted to throwing plastic at trees.

From there it was just a hop, skip and a double double animal style with extra spread and no lettuce or tomato to my sisters house in Stockton where I opened the door and stepped out into mid August Philadelphia weather. After more than a month of you better have a sweatshirt as soon as the sun goes down (and in most cases pants and a coat), that was quite unexpected. The next morning I did something I've never done before... I took the RV out to go somewhere (A disc golf course, of course) and then drove right back to where I came from. Could I be any less California than driving a 29,000 pound diesel bus as my commuter vehicle? That course is about to host the NorCal Championships. I'm probably sticking around here a week longer than I thought I was going to so I can check that out. I know that because... You guessed, it, I met up with a couple of locals while I was there and got to play a round with them. No pizza, no theater and nobody had a stick long enough to get my disc down out of the pine tree this time though.