We left the next morning and headed for the campground in Jedidiah. The camping cost $35!!!! We did not remember it costing that much before. We found out from a different campground ranger later, that up until about two years ago, it was $20.
Anyway, we headed towards the Stout Grove. We went to that same grove 3 years ago from a different, longer direction. That time we hitchhiked up to it. This time we parked at one trailhead where a ranger happened to pass us in a car and mentioned that he didn't think the RV would fit down the road... We took the bikes down to the grove since we figured it couldn't be far. Joe wanted to take a different hike after the Stout Grove hike. Unfortunately, the bridge was out. We took our shoes off and walked across the stream. The hike was absolutely gorgeous. It was about 3 miles long and ended at the road. From there we walked part way down the road back to the parking lot where our bikes were. We got a ride from a pickup for about half the ride.
After the bike ride, we decided the RV could fit through without a problem. We drove through without incident and made it to Crescent City. From there, we headed to Del Norte State Park. It was pricey, but we stayed in the campground there and went for a nice, short, but steep hike. The next day we kept going through the redwood parks and got to our Bald Hills Rd we were going to take to 96. It was steep! We stopped for a short, mile walk around Lady Bird Johnson Grove. After that we worked our way up the hill more until we got to the road that goes down to the Tall Trees Grove. That grove contains the tallest tree in the world. Unfortunately, you need a permit to drive down the 6.5 mile road. It was foggy and a bit chilly, but we decided to bike down it, then do the 3.6 mile hike (800ft elevation change), then bike back up. The hike was gorgeous. The bike turned into 13 mile bike ride 1300 feet of up and down in elevation. We were pretty tired after that.
We continued up the road where the road quality disintegrated! The fog also got so bad we could barely see a thing. There was a trail head, so we parked there for the night. The next morning, we headed out right away. We eventually came out above the clouds to a gorgeous day. Our hope was to find a place in the national forest between 101 and I5. It was looking pretty bleak for a while (no internet at all) but once we got to Happy Camp, CA we finally got internet!!! We went up into the forest nearby and have found an awesome spot. Hopefully we'll stay here for a few days.
-Miranda
Pretty redwoods.
A monitor we saw sitting in the middle of a bridge during our hike off the Stout Grove. So crazy! Joe carried it out. It was super heavy since it was filled with rocks and mud. We gave it to a park ranger.
Pretty foggy redwoods.
Joe and I in front of a redwood in the Tall Trees Grove. This isn't the tallest tree, but we did see it!
Along the crazy long road. Right after we got out of the fog. This was a prescribed burn area.
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We woke up the next morning to rain. Joe went down to check out the possibility of surfing, but it looked pretty bad. We decided to just head out. We had to stop in Bandon to pick up some deworming medication for the cats. (Curly had tapeworms.) From there we ended up stopping at Cape Blanco. It was so foggy, we couldn't see a thing. The sites were $20 for hookups, so we decided to stay.
That night we did the pills for the cats. I'll tell you one thing, I'm never giving Lucy another pill. She was freaking out so much that her mouth started foaming. Pickles took the trick of putting it in cheese. All the other cats had to go the hard way.
It poured all night. The next morning we hooked up to the electricity and got the battery fully charged before leaving. We ended up spending the afternoon in a grocery store parking lot to get some work done. There was a decent pizza place in town that had a really good salad bar. We had dinner there before heading out again. Still in the pouring rain. We ended up finding a road in the forest that was gated. We parked near there for the night.
Let's just say we've done a lot of movie watching... Right now we're at a Fred Meyers in Brookings. The rain seems to have stopped but it's super wet and foggy out there. It's supposed to clear up tomorrow. Hopefully that holds true.
-Miranda
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Some log trucks drove by this morning so we decided it wasn't really safe to let the kitties out. We were just too close to the road. We left right away in the morning and headed for town.
We found a trailhead on Hill Lake right next to some of the dunes. We really wanted to check out the dunes some, we stopped there and went for a hike. It was super fun. We didn't really follow the trail. We went up in the dunes and walked around quite a bit.
From there we decided to head towards Cape Arago and the state parks there. We stopped at a sushi place in North Bend that was excellent. Once we got out to the coast again, we found a County Park that is relatively cheap, has showers (we were full of sand) and is pretty close to some decent surf. Not only that, we have good internet. :D We may stay here a few nights. We'll see.
-Miranda
Curly, Pickles and Zoe looking out the window. Lucy was there earlier but of course I didn't have my camera ready.
Our footprints up the sand dune.
Me walking along the sand dunes.
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We ended up not having any issues that night. We woke up and headed to a gas station. Fortunately it was a larger station, so plenty of room for us to just park. We stayed there for a bit and worked until lunch. For lunch, we stopped at a yummy Indian buffet. After, we decided to pick up a few things from Petco. It turned out that a Verizon store was in the same area, so Joe went to go check out their plans and see if what they have would work for us. He had learned earlier that apparently when Sprint is roaming, it's typically on Verizon's network. Since we use Sprint roaming quite a bit, it makes sense to try out Verizon.
We ended up getting a global broadband card. Then we'll be able to use it when/if we do some global travel soon, which we are hoping to do. He tried it in the parking lot and it worked great!
Our next stop was to the vet. The whole reason we came to Corvallis. The vet was very nice. She said that it was an odd showing of a Herpes virus, or something along those lines. Apparently all cats are basically exposed to it at some point, it's just what their body does with it. Something must of stressed her out to the point that this happened. Probably getting the scratches on her cornea? Not really sure. Anyway, she gave us some steroid drops, but took a scraping of some of the cells off her eye to go in for testing just to be sure that's what it was. I just got the email from the vet and we are to start putting the drops in now. Hopefully this clears it up. *crosses fingers*
Our plan from there was to head back to Newport and see about staying at South Beach again and do more surfing for a few days. On our way there, we saw a large black dog running around the highway. It was going to get hit.... We pulled over and eventually caught it. It didn't have a collar, so we used some rope we had to create a make-shift lease. It was a huge sweetheart. Walked right next to whoever had the rope. We obviously couldn't bring it with us to a town so I went to the nearest house. It was a nice older lady that had 3 dogs. I asked her if she would be able to call animal control or something. She kindly got a collar and leash for it and said her granddaughter was stopping by soon and could probably bring it to Newport. So, hopefully it ends up with a good home, or even has a microchip in it so it can go back to its owner.
It was really warm in Corvallis and until right before we got into Newport. We crested a hill and dropped down into Newport and entered a fog. When we got to the campground, is was so packed! Apparently all the 'old timers' come out when the kids go back to school. There were no spots even close to the closer trail to the ocean. So, we would have had quite a walk with the boards in order to go surfing. Since it was foggy, I headed down to the beach to see if it was even surfable. It was so foggy, I could barely see into the water. So, definitely not very safe for surfing. Since it was supposed to rain for the next few days, we decided to just head out.
Not long after leaving, we noticed three bicyclists on the side of the road hitchhiking. Joe was like, really?!? So, he stopped. Turns out one of the guys' knee was bugging him. Joe didn't think all three bikes would fit, so we were just going to take the one guy to Yachats and they would meet him there. After getting the one bike in, he decided that maybe they could all fit. We ended up getting all three bikes and all three guys in there. We were going to head up a national forest road near Cape Perpetua, so we stopped there to drop them off. It was around 6pm and we had a lot of spaghetti and a jar of sauce that we've had since we started the trip. We could never open it since we can't refrigerate it. We offered them a spaghetti dinner which they seemed to greatly enjoy. It was fun to sit and chat with them a bit.
The road we took was mostly paved. It turns out that it connected up with the road we had taken up into that forest just a few days before. We were hoping to find a place where we had service. That didn't happen. By this time, the Verizon card stopped working for some reason. It would give me one error and Joe's computer a completely different error. Since we weren't having any luck with server, we wanted to go back to where we stayed the last time. By this time it was 10pm. Unfortunately, someone was already there. We went back up the hill, waited until it flattened out and stayed on the side of the road for the night.
Today, we headed into Florence and Joe spent a good 2 hours on the phone with Verizon trying to get it to work. We finally got it working again after having to do a bunch of crazy commands in the device... Apparently hooking it up to my computer with the Sprint SmartView program messed it up?? We're not quite sure, but we won't be using it on my computer again apparently.
We're now somewhere south of Dun City. I think we're on some timber company's land? We don't think it's national forest land, but it looks like it can be used by hunters and the public. We haven't decided if we're going to stay here tomorrow so we can let the cats out yet or not. We'll see.
-Miranda
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We were able to stay the weekend at the South Beach campground. Some days the surfing was pretty good, other days it was pretty rough. There was actually a competition on Sat. and Sun. and they were using the best area of the beach for it, but we still had fun. Joe's makeshift fin fix worked for the two days we needed it. We decided we would just head out on Sunday.
We aimed for the forest above Florence. We found a road that looked promising. It was gravel, then when it came to an intersection, it was paved... . . . We decided to go up the mountain, and it remained paved. Very bizarre. We found a neat hunter's site, unfortunately there was no internet. We stayed there the night so the cats could go out for the rest of that day and the next morning. They had been getting pretty ornery. This morning we left and found out that we apparently hit our limit for our roaming usage with our Sprint modem.. . . Considering everywhere but the towns seems to be roaming for us, that's kind of a problem. We may talk to Sprint to figure out our plan or even look into Verizon to see if it's better. Who knows.
While in Florence, we tried to call some vets that specialize in animal eyes. The first one wouldn't be available until possibly Friday. The second one works in both Corvallis and Eugene. We were already straight west of Eugene (the Newport vet had mentioned this veterinarian and we assumed she was in Eugene most of the time since it's the larger city). Unfortunately, when we called, we learned that she is only in Eugene on Friday!! We called the Corvallis office and got an appointment for Pickles tomorrow. That meant an 85 mile drive back north... Whoops. Hopefully this vet can help her and this can get taken care of.
Tonight we're just parked on the site of a street in Corvallis. It's a college town so we're doubting there will be any problems.
-Miranda
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