Eagle Lake, CA -- Fri, 10/14/22

 

While camped at Merrill c/g on Eagle Lake (north of Susanville), Jimmy and I discovered a wide, paved walking/bike trail that travels from Christie c/g to Eagle Lake Marina, with Merrill c/g somewhere in the center.  At this time of year, we had a most pleasant ride through the pine trees along the south shore of the "second-largest natural lake in California." Sorry, I didn't get any pics of Tergel in her campsite with its view of the lake, but we were very pleased with the c/g; plus, using our "old farts" pass, we got in for half price.  Merrill c/g at 5200' is located in the Eagle Lake Recreation Area of the Lassen National Forest.

These Aspens were showing a little fall color.

From (closed for the season) Aspen c/g.

We could not, simply could not, believe the sign at the top of the steep ramp.  The water is possibly a quarter-mile away!  White dots on the shoreline?  White Pelicans.  Below, we got off our bikes at the top of the ramp to walk down, and the water is obviously still far in the distance.  Boulders had been placed at the bottom of the ramp.

We walked closer to the Pelicans.

If you try to get too near, they fly.

We biked to Eagle Lake boat ramp, and I had déjà vu all over again.  We parked the bikes and walked along Boat Harbor Road, high above the water, from whence we took these pics.  The end of the ramp is at far left.  These little boats were trying to shooo the Pelicans away.  We watched for a long time, and all the Pelicans would do was turn around, and then around again.

Here's a better view of the ramp, boats, and birds.  The folks on the ramp swung burlap bags over their heads and toward the Pelicans, but the birds were not to be deterred.  Fish might be in the offing!  The small boats were just as undeterred and kept circling, trying to discourage the pesky Pelicans. 

Hundreds of White Pelicans.

Picture from near the parking lot.

This facility is closed.  No kidding.  Below you see the boat ramp disappearing into the grassy shrubs, at right, and Boat Harbor Road at left, atop the rocks.  All that lies between used to be underwater.  Kinda boggles the mind.  I think we've been here before, but Jimmy doesn't.  

We continued riding to (closed) Christie c/g and out onto the nearly-deserted highway for a while, and then back to our campsite.  Much of the path was so strewn with pine straw, at times it wasn't easy to see what was path and what wasn't!  But, this was truly enjoyable, unhurried riding on a perfect autumn day.

We thought the campground would be filled by evening, it being a Friday, but many sites remained unoccupied.  This was such a relaxing stay for us after our royal SNAFU!  I believe Merrill c/g will close by Nov 1st, unless snow falls beforehand.  Jimmy and I braced for another chilly morning tomorrow (this morning:  28°), and then we'll move on into Nevada.

Coasting in Oregon, Tues/Wed 9/21-9/22

Leaving the tippety-top of Oregon, Jimmy and I had a choice between returning home via Interstate-5 or driving the two-lane, twisting, slow-going, world-class Pacific Coast Scenic Byway. Oregon's coastline stretches for 363 magnificent miles, and an amazing landmark state law ensures every inch of it is open to the public! Cliffs and sandy coves, crashing waves, and craggy headlands!  Throw in sunny days with cool temps and we're hooked.  For us the choice was "no contest!"

We weren't in a hurry as we had a reservation at Chinook Winds RV park near Lincoln City, so we could pull into "viewpoints" and gawk to our hearts' content.  We were standing at the pull out for Neahkahnie Mtn -- at 1661', it's one of the highest points on Oregon's coast.  Kudos to whoever figured out how to build Hwy 101 with obstacles like this mountain to surmount!  Below is how the road people made Neahkahnie Mtn navigable.  Wowzers!

Chinook Winds is a Passport America park, which boasts good prices, but I didn't care much for the park, as we were on top of our neighbors ... however, for one night with FHU, we could do it.  Located on the Siletz River a couple of miles inland from Lincoln City, the park was full of fishermen and boats.  The guy or gal above was looking for a freebie, and, why not, the river was beginning to fill with salmon!

Need I tell you what Jimmy is doing, above?  Can you say, picking blackberries?  Yes, indeed, yummy  berries beside the river were ripe and ready!

After picking berries, we drove into Lincoln City and found a parking space for Smartie, so we could (yup, you guessed it), go walking on the beach.  Happiness is:  being Out and About on such a beaut of a bluebird-blue-sky day ... at the seaside. This gull must have the same thought.

A Common Murre seemed to be beached.  Eventually a wave caught the poor thing and it floated away, but I'm sorry to say that I don't believe it could fly, meaning it might be someone else's dinner.

The gull chased a cormorant away!

* * * * *

We left Lincoln City Wednesday morning, with no particular place to end up, just coasting south.  We stopped in Newport 'cause we wanted to visit the Hatfield Marine Science Center again, something we did ten years ago.  (I was going to type "several years ago," till I looked it up on the blog.  My how time flies!)  I sort of fell in love with an octopus in a tank there (name:  Amigo), and I think the love was returned.  Too bad today was Wednesday, they didn't open till Thursday, so we drove on.  No octopus sighting for me.

From our new campsite, I watched this hummer check out every fuchsia flower.  My camera doesn't take the stop action shots like a high-powered lens would, but you can certainly see a hummingbird whizzing away.  Very cool.

Oregon has a lot of state parks, both with and without campgrounds.  We've camped in a good number of them over the years, but not Jessie Honeyman Memorial St Pk, known simply as "Honeyman," located a few miles south of Florence, Oregon.  This is where we stopped for the night, in a quiet, treed site with no near neighbors.  Perfect.  No problem getting a site, either, we saw plenty of vacancies.

We thought the park was on the ocean, but it turned out to be two miles from the water.  What they had, however, was sand dunes.  Miles of sand dunes!  We were in the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area.  We were in for a treat!

As soon as we finished lunch, we set out from the campground on a trail leading to where Jimmy is standing, above.  It appeared that others trekked down that hill and into the trees, and so did we.

Still on a path of sorts through the trees, we spied this opening.  You can't see the top of the dune where Jimmy is -- it's too high!  We looked straight up to the top and said, what the heck, let's give it a go, and so we did. 

Sandals came off first and we scrambled up and up.  Pretty soon we were moving crab-like in the soft, thick sand to make any headway.  Eventually I put a sandal on each hand to help me reach the top, digging in with all four!  I wasn't at the top when I took this picture (I'd stopped to breathe!)  Good workout on this one!

Almost at the top.

This was what we saw when we reached the top.  More dunes!  Lots of tire marks on the sand meant OHV's come ripping through, and, in fact, we saw several buggies with paying customers yeehawing as the OHV's became airborne and then dropped back to earth, sand flying everywhere!  Looked like fun.  Next time.

I know it seems like I should've straightened the top left picture, but that's what it looked like, straight up.  We climbed a few more dunes, stood near a knife edge with a sharp drop (scary), and dug our toes in the sand.  We toyed with the idea of plodding to the ocean in all this sand, but ixnayed that idea.

Looks like a sidewinder wiggled across the sand.

If you weren't paying attention,

it could be easy to lose your bearings and get lost.

Luckily there's dudes like the guy above.  He spotted us from afar and zoomed over our way to ask if we were all right or needed anything.  We assured him we were doing fine and he roared away.  Actually, I think he just wanted to show off his OHV skills.  I mean, he ripped across a dune and up and over!  So much for people getting lost, thank goodness.

We could see a snippet of ocean sparkling in the afternoon sun, as you see above, under the word "ocean."  Certainly we could hear the surf crashing ashore.  This is a neat place to explore.  We knew we'd feel this sand-trudging tomorrow, somewhere, either in our feet or muscles unused to this kind of walking. (and so we did!)  We found our way to the first big dune and saw a different, easier way down to the trail and eventually to Tergel.  This c/g is almost as big as Ft Stevens, which I've heard is the biggest in the state.

"Formed by the ancient forces of wind, water and time, these dunes are like no others in North America, and extend for 40 miles along the Oregon coast between Florence and Coos Bay. Wind sculpted dunes tower almost 500 feet above the ocean shore."  I didn't realize when I said miles of dunes, that we were talking about 40 miles of dunes!  Can't do it all, so we were content with our little escapade.

Tomorrow we'll continue on towards home.

Da Bridge! Da Bridge! Thursday, 4/28/16

Thursday's sunny morning was far different from the rainy day before. It didn't even seem too windy, which was good for our plans. We checked out of Cow Hollow Inn, packing our stuff in the Prius, and drove to and parked at the Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Center, San Fran side. Today we're walking the entire distance across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco to Marin County. Not an especially big deal, but it's something we wanted to do. And today is a stellar day to do it.

Dressed in layers against the chill morning, here we stand near the welcome center.

Lucky us, there's nary a cloud in the robin's egg blue sky.

Below this end of the bridge is Fort Point, a Civil War fortress.

Surfers wait for the big ones in the white water.

It's a nice three-and-a-half-mile scenic hike from end to end.

This "toy" helicopter flew UNDER the bridge; very strange to see!  It wasn't a toy!

Not often a real helicopter flies below you.

Jimmy is standing at a viewpoint on the bridge.

High rises in the City of San Francisco are visible left, center.

Lime Point Lighthouse sits at land's end on the northern side of the bay.

Built in 1883, but I don't know if it's still operating.  It was off limits.

Hooray, we made it to the other side!  The bridge wasn't too crowded, either.

What a great walk, and now we get to turn around and go back where we started from!

Both sides of the bridge approaches are being seismically retrofitted.

Ongoing work includes new support towers. 

Did not know a thing about Angel Island, but now we do.  The entire island is a state park (1962), accessible by private boat or public ferry.  In the mid-19th Century it was used for cattle ranching.  Later in the 19th Century, Fort McDowell was established. From 1910 to 1940 it was used as an immigration station, processing approximately one million Asian immigrants into the US.  It has an active lighthouse at Point Blunt.  Tourist activities, biking and hiking and even limited camping are what's happening these days. Oh boy, another new place to explore.

 Telephoto of Alcatraz Island, stuck out in the middle of that cold bay!

At Vista Point, some guy sidled up to us, took my camera in hand, and said, "Have some fun with those pictures!  Here, hold your hands like this, and like this."  And he moved back and clicked the shutter! The Marin County side of the bridge has a much bigger parking lot, and it was chock-a-block full of cars and buses and crowded with people.  More restrooms, too.  I think I heard every language spoken on earth at this spot.  That's how famous this bridge is.  Both ends of the bridge touch the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, but on the Marin side, the NRA extends a long way.  More fun in the works!

Back on the SF side.

Of course, it took us much longer than we intended, as we stop often to gawk or study something, but we weren't in a hurry.  This was what we wanted to do -- so be it.  I can tell you that Tues-Wed-Thurs were high counts on the ol' fitbit.  Yesterday we put in over 19,000 steps (yep, we were in bed early). 

So, we enjoyed our brief SF outing.  One evening we devoured pizza, and we ate in Chinatown the next evening at R & G Lounge -- love their spicy eggplant.  We took the #30 bus to Union Square (that actually was a lot of fun and a lot easier than driving and looking for a parking place) where we shopped at Uniqlo and bought a few things.

Transamerica Pyramid from Chinatown.

We finished our bridge walk around Noon, and headed for home, with a stop first at Ikea, and then a short visit with Matt and Jen in Sacramento. They're redoing their front yard landscaping with drought resistant plants, and it was beginning to take shape, looking very nice, very professional.  We finally got home around 7pm.

Time for a cute pic.  Our friend, Fran, handed us this goofy toy to give to either Sophie or Maggie (Matt and Jen's doggies), tho I'm here to tell you that no way, NO WAY, was Sophie going to move with that "monkey on her back!!"

The Mighty Task is Done! Wed aft, 4/23/14

Here's another one of those bucket list things.  If I had a bucket list, which I don't and neither does Jimmy, crossing the 1.5 mile Golden Gate Bridge on foot or bicycle, would be right up there.  Never thought we'd actually do it, either.  Wrong!  We walked to the South Tower (larger tower in photo below).  We didn't go all the way to other other side for two reasons:  One was we only had a half bottle of water between us, but the main reason is we wanted to visit the Disney Family Museum this afternoon, and we were running out of time (again!)  We live close enough. We'll be back!

Spectacular location, graceful lines, emblematic color = one famous bridge!

Aw, lovers below the bridge!  Sweet!

The bridge is way up there!  Fort Point is practically underneath the bridge.  We spent considerable time milling around here.  The fort was built between 1953 and 1861.  Now a National Historic Site, it houses a museum (which wasn't open today).

Yes, we were surprised to see waves like this, and surfers riding the waves!

Durn critters are everywhere....

It's easy to see why the Golden Gate Bridge is possibly the most beautiful, and certainly the most photographed bridge in the world. Construction began on Jan 5, 1933, and it opened on Mary 27, 1937. Until 1964, the Golden Gate was the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at 4,200 ft. In 1984 this magnificent bridge was added to the list of Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks.

  

Yup, here we are, on our way to the South Tower.
BTW, those towers reach 500 ft above the road.

Looking up:  South Tower from the walkway, with Art Deco details.

No hats up here!  Very windy.  Crowded, too, with walkers, joggers, and bicyclists.  We've decided walking across would be more fun than riding across (unless we rode really early before hoards of tourists got up).  We started walking today from the dinky-looking pier in the distance.  That's San Francisco's skyscrapers beyond.

The subject line refers to a poem written by the Chief Engineer, Joseph P. Strauss.

* * * * *

We didn't get to the Disney Family Museum, also on the Presidio grounds, until 3 pm.  It was so interesting and so artfully presented, and brought back so many memories, that we closed it down at 6 pm!

Another superb (and very full) day.

(tickets say 5 pm, but closing today was 6 pm)

* * * * *

From our room:  A fantastic sunset on our last evening in the city, highlighting the bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts dome.  What a wonderful mini-vacation-anniversary this has been!

* * * * *