November 17th - or so. Transition south.

Yeah, we fell off the earth.  It's been a crazy month.  Now that we are settle  in SoCal, things should start happening for us again. 

Just before we left Eureka, we made a final night at Humbolt Cider Co. There was a night of live jazz with a gentleman who came in and stood in the upstairs balcony and played some cool jazz on a sax with recorded background.  It was pretty good. 

Laurie finished her final shift and then we packed up and closed the camper.  Back on the road.  We pretty much drove straight through.  The two big fires were in areas we didn't have to go near.  The one in the north was way off to the east, and we didn't go anywhere near Malibu.  There was a lot of haze in the air where ever we went, though. 

The contrast in driving conditions between driving through a forest, over mountains, and semi-arid deserts was something.  I chuckled when I drove through the Angeles National Forest that consisted of scrub brush and a few scattered short trees after being up in the Redwood National Forest.

Driving down through the San Joaquin Valley, I noticed a lot of farmland that was just not being used.  Worse, a lot of the orchards and vineyards seemed sick and under watered.  This is the result partially of drought, and partially of State Government taking water away from the valley due to concerns over an endangered small fish that gets caught in the canal filters.  As we drove through Kern county, there were many protest signs declaring "Farming is not wasting water" and blaming the State politicians of mismanagement of resources. Sad.

We got down to El Centro and Rio Bend in the evening.  A security guy put us in a short time pull-through until we could settle up with the office in the morning.  The owners put in new managers and changed a bunch of rules and tossed out all workamper contracts from last year.  Because we couldn't reconcile there offers with her work schedule, we decided I wouldn't work and we got our preferred site and got moved in.

Here we are.  We participated in bingo one night and attended the park's Thanksgiving dinner.  We were also able to have our first Magic the Gathering night in San Diego.  I found out that there are four new geocaches in the immediate area. That should be fun.

There should be a lot more to come.

Jazz at Humbolt Cider Co

Her final night at work

Some random final shots of Eureka

A cool old car project found at BNS

October 14th - The Avenue of the Giants

We took a day to do a little sightseeing.  I have a lot of interesting and pretty pictures, so I'm going to break this into two posts.

South of us is the Humbolt State Park.  Hwy 101 runs down through it.  There is a side road scenic drive that was actually hwy 101 at one time. We have such better road construction skills now that they made the hwy somewhat straighter.  The older section is called "The Avenue of the Giants"

As we got into the drive, we stopped at the first pull off we found.  A plaque speaks of this section being dedicated to a local person.  There are many little grove areas dedicated such.  Sometimes, there are informational signs explaining local shrubberies.  

We soon came to our first geocache of the day. GC190X6  Albino Redwood Tree .Just south of the town of Pepperwood there is a turn-off.  In front of the wall of trees, was a nearly white redwood.  Back in the foliage was a path that led to a little opening.  After a bit of searching, we found the tricky guy.

Although it's all just winding roads and very big trees, It's still breathtaking.  

Just a bit down the road, there was a turn-off that headed back to 101.  We stopped there and trekked into the woods to find  GC1RFA1  Redwood Drop   Just a couple of quick finds. 

The Eel river runs along the avenue and we stopped at one point to document it.

Later, we came across a clearing where there was a little souvenir shop.  At that location was "The Immortal Redwood".  The tree is over 900 years old and has survived fire, loggers, and flood.  There were acouple of others sights such as a hollowed out trunk you can walk through and a very cool chair. 

I'll bring more in our next post.

There are hugh leaf clover patches everywhere

Geocache here

Eel river

September 17th - North County Fair

North of us, there is another town called Arcata.  They had their annual street fair.  In the town is a block-square park.  Vendors and artisans lined both sides of the surrounding streets with booths.  Some food, lots of great handcrafted items and clothing.  This looked like a real hippie-artist thing.

There was the annual Samba parade around the square.

We walked around and looked at a lot of cool stuff.  Of course, we had to buy some hot sauce and jelly.  We stopped in a tavern that had a lot of old items around the bar and a couple of surprises.  A couple of the buildings have ancient neon lights which was cool. 

On our way out was a girl band which played music from the 40s.  Guitar, double bass, and woodwinds/brass.  They were pretty good.  Arcata is an interesting town.

http://www.northcountryfair.org/

We had lunch at a combination cider and meat pie place.  We even brought home a couple of empanadas and pot pies.

By the way, completely unassociated, Baseball postseason started today.  I'm excited.  Just sayin'.

This was painted into the street up where I parked the beast

Lots of people

Town square

Amazing art masks

The parade

Everett's

no, wait, what???

Awesome band

Booty

Empanadas!!

Cider bar