From the Redwoods to Slab City!

We had been following the weather forecast and were concerned about some storms that were heading  towards the Oregon Coast, so we decided to skip our planned stay at Harris Beach State Park, on the Oregon/Cal. border and instead headed into the Redwoods.

Can’t remember the name of this campground, but it’s in the Smith River recreation area, just south of the border. Lovely and quiet! Rained just a bit overnight but dry the next morning.

Black Bart, our truck, did an excellent job of pulling the grades along the coast highway. I was concerned about the highway gears, but no worries at all. I’d had an extra large trans cooler installed and had some custom exhaust work done that gives it more oomph. Awesome job pulling HOWIE the 5th wheel (Home On Wheels Includes Everything)!

No trip to the Redwoods is complete without a visit to Paul Bunyon and Babe the Blue Ox! I made the pic especially nice by including a beautiful woman in the foreground.

A huge herd of elk were on the side of the road. On the left side were about 50 more that Sheila didn’t see until it was too late! Lots of cars stopped to take pics and oogle but no room for our rig.

Some of the huge redwoods along our way. Lots of pullouts were available for cars, but no rigs like ours, unfortunately. One of the downsides of traveling with a long set up.

After leaving the Redwoods we decided to stay on the coast Hwy 101 nearly all the way down to San Francisco, then head west to Sacramento. We made our way along one of the steepest, most windy roads that we’d ever seen. It’d have been a fun drive except for Howie hanging onto our truck. We finally made it to Clear Lake, where there was a beautiful (closed) campground. By this time it was getting late in the day and we were exhausted by the drive. On we went, trying to find an RV park to stay in (no such luck). We ended up driving all the way to I5 and stayed in a rest area for the first (and last, hopefully) time. Right next to us was a big rig that left his engine running all night (no reefer unit), I’m guessing to stay warm, even though it was 75 degrees. Grr. Hardly any sleep, and off at 4 AM to try to avoid the traffic snarls from Sacramento to Stockton. No such luck; even at that hour the traffic was horrible. Stockton gets our vote for the worst highway conditions. Very narrow lanes, horrible surface, and insane drivers. It was like being in a pinball game, watching each other cut into and out of traffic to save a few seconds by endangering other’s lives. We finally got past the madness and pulled off for a nap at another rest area. We drove on to Barstow and stopped at an RV park in a small town about 8 miles farther east called Dagget. We caught up on our sleep and did our laundry. So quiet and peaceful! I checked the fuel consumption on the way down and we averaged 9.5 MPG, which is amazing considering it was only 1 MPG less than the truck got the previous trip pulling a trailer that weighed only a third of this one.

The next morning we drove back to Barstow then headed south on hwy 247 to Yukka Valley and the Joshua Tree Natl. Park. We’d intended to camp in the park for a week before heading down to the Salton Sea and the famous Slab City. Joshua Tree was amazing!

Gorgeous rock formations! It looked like they were carefully stacked on top of each other.

See the rock climbers on the top? Wow!

The two campgrounds that we came across that were our favorites were restricted to rigs no longer that 28′, and I think ours is about 42′..oh well.. on to the other three campgrounds with room enough for us and they were..well.. not the nicest we’ve seen, to put it mildly. Dusty and boring, so on to the Slabs!

Salvation Mountain . This project was started many years ago by an artist by the name of Leanard Knight. It’s now considered to be one of the seminal artworks in California. Go figure. It was very interesting to see..

One of the typical ‘homesteads’.

Now that’s a new kind of a ‘shoe tree’!

Slab City has an interesting history, but I won’t attempt to do it justice. Instead, here’s a link to a wikipedia page that will tell you all about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_City The place is basically a homeless camp for about 150 people. It’s an incredible dump. trash everywhere, not a wholesome place. No toilets, water, or trash services. No electricity. Thousands of people camp there every winter, but I honestly don’t see the attraction. We didn’t stay there, as there were no other boondockers that we could park near for security’s sake. We’re outa here, and off to Yuma!