Day 29, Sunday March 29th: The Avenue of Giants, arriving at the Redwood National Park and we have some problems.

We took our time leaving Shelter Cove on Sunday Morning, it was 53F when we got up and there was no hurry.

Shelter Cove Runway

We noticed that we were parked right in front of an Airport runway, but we never saw any planes. 

The trip back over the mountain to CA-101 did not seem nearly as stressful as the night before, probably because we knew to take it slower.  

Switchbacks to Shelter Cove

Even in 1st gear, I had to use a lot of braking to prevent the engine from going into the red, which is just about 4000 rpms. 

We took CA-101 north for a short way and got off on 'The Avenue of Giants' which parallels CA-101 for about 32 miles. It winds through Northern California’s Humboldt Redwoods State Park and is worth the detour. 

We stopped at the Visitor Center which is about halfway into the drive. 

Charles Kellogg's Trail Log

The most interesting thing for me was the "Trail Log".  It's a long story that I will spare the reader (if there are any), but Charles Kellogg made an RV out of a Redwood Log in 1917 and 9 months out of the year, for about 5 years, he lived in it while prophesizing that we need to save the Redwood forests. They have it in the museum.

Driving through the Redwood Forest is very cool.

We enjoyed cruising the Redwoods and set off for the Redwood National/State Park.  We were due for supplies, so we stopped in Eureka, CA at a Walmart and then at the Lost Coast Brewery and Cafe for lunch, it was very good. 

We arrived at the southern most visitor center, the Kuchel Visitor Center, around 15:00. We talked with a young ranger girl and told her we wanted to camp. She asked what we were driving, I said a 25' motor home and she gave us a few choices. We picked Gold Bluffs Beach Campground. It is about 5 miles of logging road to the gate and then 2 miles of goat path to the campsite. The road had pot holes and ruts a foot deep, our RV has less than 6 inches of clearance.  I did what I could but we probably should have turned around. 

Broken Sway Bar Clamp

The first big pop we heard was the rear sway bar clamp snapping and dropping into the road, I picked it up out of the road and it clearly had been cracked for a while but this road finished it. I installed a heavy duty sway bar in 2020, and it utilized the stock clamps.

Serenity Sway Bar Upgrade 2020

I can only guess that the stock clamps were not meant to take the added torque of the the heavy duty sway bar. I am not sure where I will get it repaired. It is not a catastrophic fail, but it is just going to make the RV handle like crap until we get it replaced. 

After that, we did not get far when I hit a pot hole so hard the van bottomed out on one of the leveler jacks. This removed the Jack Pad by stripping the nut that holds it onto the hydraulic cylinder. Again, I stopped and picked up the parts. When we got to Camp, I ran the Serenity up on a ramp and reattached the pad, but with the nut stripped this is not a permanent fix.  I wish I brought my welder. 

These issues are a bummer, but we have been over 5000 miles and these are out first problems, and one could argue they are self inflicted, these roads should not be traveled with our RV. If I had done my research, I would have known that. We will just pick up the pieces and keep moving. 

Gold Bluffs Beach Campground

Once here, the campground is not bad and we found a site that was plenty big enough for our RV.

Monday we had planned hike from here that requires driving another 5 miles down the goat path, but we have since reconsidered and plan to work our way back to civilization. They say when you are in a hole, stop digging, right now that makes the most sense.