Day 30, Monday March 30th: Trapped at Gold Bluff Beach, experiencing the Redwoods and making our way along CA-101 North

Monday we decided to ease our way out of Gold Bluffs Campground in the morning and move to a more developed part of the Redwood National/State Park.

Gold Bluffs Beach

I walked down to the beach in the morning, it is a beautiful beach with dark soft sand. 

Landslide

We were rolling out of our campsite about 08:00, but we had only gone about 1/4 of mile and I said to June did we take a wrong turn because we were at a dead end.  It was not a dead end, it was a landslide that blocked the road, we were going no where. 

We spoke to a another camper who had already deployed his Starlink and was able to reach the Ranger station by phone and said they would send someone up to check out the situation. There were not a lot of us in the Campground, two vans, 2 cars and 1 pickup. The other Van was a Renault from Switzerland. They had their van shipped over by boat and have been in Mexico; they are headed to Canada and then will have their van shipped home out of Halifax at the end of July.  They were interesting to chat with. 

Landslide at Gold Bluff Beach

From time to time we would go back to the slide by bike or walking to check on things. Eventually a park employee came with T-Paper and other essentials for the bathroom. He walked in from the other side of the slide and said help was on the way, and they would do their best to get us out of the campground today. The workers were all very nice.

Banana Slug

As we were all walking back to the campground with the Ranger carry his T-Paper and supplies, he pointed out a Banana Slug, they are pretty big. I don't know why he was not yellow? The young girls were so concerned he would get run over. I took a stick and moved him out of the road, it was my good deed for the day. 

It was raining so we did not want to hike, we felt for the young girls who just sat in their cars (they were all laughing and taking it in stride), at least we were comfortable. As much as I dreaded it, I decided to take the down time to do our taxes. They were almost done anyway, but I was procrastinating. Luckily we were parked where I had good internet via our Starlink, so for the next 3 hours I cursed while June read a book. Just before 12N I hit the send button to pay the Feds, the State of VT and the State of NY. I just love paying my fair share, but I was glad they were done. 

After I wrapped up my taxes and we had lunch (yesterday's left overs from Lost Coast Brewery), I rode my bike back to the slide. They had a large bucket loader that had basically made a path over the slide, but it was like going over a mountain of dirt. I talked to the operator and asked him to flatten the hump because my long wheel base would scrape over the hump. He said he could do some, but they were concerned about moving too much material and having another slide, it was a legit concern. Their plan was to get the campers out and close the campground, and then bring in equipment that could survive if a slide came down while they were working. Funny, one of the rangers said he wanted to discharge his gun into the bank and see if he could get it to come down.  I said that is a great idea! But wait until we are out. 

Driving over the Landslide

Around 13:15 a Ranger came to the campground and told everyone to leave, we were excited to comply. The dirt mound was nicely sculpted so we had no problems getting over it. We got out with out anymore excitement. 

We had yet to do any hiking because of the weather, so we stopped at the first hiking location that had some easy hikes.  

Trillium Falls Hike

We did two hikes, the first was a short hike called Trillium Falls. Since it was such a short hike, we were not expecting much but it was our first hike into the Redwood forest.  We were awestruck, the Redwoods are beyond big, they are truly towering giants.  

Trillium Falls Hike

We just did not appreciate how big they were, even when we drove through them, until we got up close, it is hard to believe something can grow that big. 

Trillium Falls

This is Trillium Falls, not quite like what we saw in Yosemite 😊.

There was Trillium growing along the trail which I assume is how the trail got its name. 

We really enjoyed the hike to Trillium Falls, and we wanted to do more but the maps that our government provides are so poor we were afraid we would end up on one of those 2 mile hikes that ends up being 10 miles...we have done a few of those. I will not go on a rant, but they could do a way better job on the maps than they do, they are difficult to read and often put things out of order..it is amazing considering they give them to millions of people. 

Big Tree

After our short hike we wanted to see Big Tree since the lady ranger at the visitor center said it was a must and it was in our general area. We somehow thought we would have to hike to Big Tree but it was about 100 yards from the parking lot.  

Big Tree is big, but it is just one of many big trees in the forest and the park made it easily viewable for all. It is not the biggest tree in the forest but easily accessible and impressive.

From Big Tree we hiked Foot Hills Trail, which is about 1.4 miles. Once we left Big Tree we saw almost no one on the trail, the forest got silent and I thought I was in a scene from Star Wars and the Ewoks were going to come out from behind a tree 😉.

Hercules

The park did a nice job using fallen trees as part of the trail. 

At the end of the trail, I thought we could make a loop back, but it was not obvious, because again the map is just terrible. We doubled back until we got to Circle trail, which we took just to make the hike a bit longer, when we got back to Big Tree we had hiked 3 miles. 

Temporary Bridge

This tree fell on a bridge and the park had put in a temporary bridge. 

Redwood

The park was in the process of removing the tree, you can see why they call them Redwoods. 

It was pushing 16:00 and we did not have a campsite for the night, so we set out for the northern part of the park, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. The Redwoods Park is a combination of National Park and State Parks, I am not sure who is in charge, but it works. 

Jedediah Smith State Park

We rolled into Jedediah SP about 17:30 and had no problem finding a campsite. The sites are first come first serve with self registration, which seems to be pretty common in the National Parks and some California State Parks. Jedediah SP is quiet and beautiful. You are camping in the Redwoods, which means, no sun, poor cell coverage and no Starlink service since everything is blocked by the redwood canopy. 

After parking the Serenity and doing my usual walk around, I found another problem. Our exhaust tail pipe has broken where the last clamp supports it.  It is not surprising since it is a 2015 chassis and we have beat the hell out if over rough roads for the last week. Tomorrow, I will crawl under it and hopefully get the rest of the exhaust system supported enough that it doesn't cause a bigger problem until we can get it fixed. 

Tuesday we plan to make our way to Oregon, up CA-101 but are unsure how far we will get.