I will visit the family twice on this trip. I will drive more or less straight there (four days and three nights).When planning, it seemed important to go directly there for house planning, but in retrospect wasn’t necessary at all, there was no house planning to do. I also want to be here at the end of the month to see Chad’s band play on the 30th. Solution: leave for a while – enjoy the Oregon coastal fog while the inland swelters through August. It was a good trip for me, because I TOOK MY TIME, leaving late, stopping early, and spending some time in some picturesque little burg in the middle. Sort of a template for how to roll if I was to travel for months at a time.
Wednesday (Aug 13)
I got going relatively early today, and managed to get myself checked in at Sierra Hot Springs at 3:36. The seven minutes I spent in line while the important first-timer in front of me asked every possible question in the slowest possible manner were free, since the sheet with my starting time couldn’t be printed until she ran out of things to ask about.
WHUFU page for: Sierra Hot Springs
Camping is just the edge of the forest behind the lodge. Next to a very pretty cow pasture at the edge of the huge Sierra Valley.
Nice lodge to hang out in, wifi and kitchen, free to campers.
The Hot Springs has also taken over the hotel in town. There is also a breakfast place and aMexican restaurant in town, both pricy but good!
tonight:
yep, this is definitely becoming a habit. This time I'm on Day One of a real road trip. The air is crisp and cool and the clouds are fluffy and I get my usual spot at the edge and I'm happy!
Thursday
Usual breakfast at the usual Sierraville Cafe. Someday I will remember to check out the new coffee place that has sprung up 100 yards away. Change is hard for me sometimes. I got back to the lodge at 1:30, and must have really had a good time dorking around on the internet, because I never made it to the pools. Alluva sudden it was 3:30, and time to go!
Since I am out this way with time on my hands, today is going to be the day I visit Clio, to check out progress on my friend Alana’s new venture, the Blackbird Inn. Clio is a teeny tiny little town about four miles east of Graeagle. Her place is the former Post Office and General Store, now being made into an inn. She and her mom and dad were working very hard on it that afternoon. The rooms look quite pleasant and inviting and I can’t wait for the bar/coffee to open.
I leave around 5pm so I can make it to a campground with time to enjoy it.
Route 89 does a kind of big loop around Quincy, and my map shows a road – Chandler Road – that cuts of off, and also avoids the 25 mph in Quincy. I tried it out. Not sure if I’ll do it again, it’s curvy and narrow and pretty slow, but it is for sure a much prettier slice of countryside than you get on the main road, so I’m glad I did it today.
Not too long after I rejoin 89 is the sign for Spanish Creek Campground. I’ve never been here because it’s been closed for the last few years, so I do a drive-by. It’s nice and has that shiny “new” feeling to it. You take a right immediately after the bridge over Spanish Creek. Descend for a while and pass the Campground Host’s site and a loop of deluxe sites in the trees, then descend another hundred feet or so to another loop of sites at creek level. This is Friday, and most of the bottom level is taken over by a giant family. Also, the creek is pretty sluggish and tired this time of year, and the whole situation screams noise and mosquitoes to me. If I were to stay here I would retreat to the grown-ups loop above, but tonight I’m going to press on to Lake Almanor. This might be pretty sweet in the winter or early spring though.
Onward to where 70 splits off to follow the Feather River to Oroville, I stay on 89, through Greenville and past the very shabby Greenville Campground. A few miles after that I cross the Lake Almanor Dam and soon am rocketing down the wide smooth road along the south side of the lake, looking for my turnoff.
I followed a “Campground” sign that had me turning off a road too early, but I rolled with it and stayed on the very pretty, quaint lakeside road, Almanor Drive West for a couple of more miles to my road. I passed a general store and thought maybe I’d walk back there to check it out.
WHUFU page for: North Almanor Campground
Pleasant campground a few hundred yards uphill from Lake Almanor, restaurant/bar within walking distance.
tonight:
this campground is way bigger than I thought, extends quite a ways up the road. I followed the bike trail south this time, took a left on the horse trail, and bushwacked my way down to the Lake Road, right where the resort dining room and bar is! What a navigator!
That hike gave me a great feeling of well-being! Not only was it pretty good exercise, but I took a chance and had a little bite-sized adventure (following the horse-trail into the “unknown”), and I made it work out, not just ok, but PERFECTLY! I had seen the riding stable signs along the lake, so I assumed that at worse the trail would take me there. As I got closer, the backs of the houses along the lake came into view, and I picked a spot to bushwhack between cabins to get to the parking areas. Following the little road towards the lake I came out exactly at … the General Store!
The store had just closed and was no big deal anyway, but now that I was there I noticed a bar/dining room across the road on the lake side, which along with the store and the cabins, comprise the Plumas Pines Resort. Inside it turned out to have a really nice deck dining area and they were delighted to allow me to order a beer and go hang out on the deck. My very favorite thing!
I nursed my beer and yakked with the waitress and bartender until sunset was pretty well done, then I walked the mile or so back to my campsite. Ate my deli salad from two days ago, looked at the stars for a while and went to bed.
Friday
The older one gets, the longer is one’s track record of past performance. Patterns begin to emerge. Looking back at my history as found in this blog, it seems that I do things at predictable times. For example, last night I stayed at North Almanor Campground. It is August 14. The only other time I have been here was on August 8, 2011.
I’ve already had an eventful trip – hot springs, visiting friends – and it’s only the third day!
I do get phone bars here, so I Yelped for coffee and/or breakfast, and surprise! there is a 4-star breakfast, Carol’s Cafe down on the lakeshore drive not far from here. It is in fact, only about another 800 yards past the dining room I went to last night. It also has a deck, but here the lake is pretty far away, over the tops of a trailer park. The deck was crowded with the Saturday lunch crowd, so I ate in solitary splendor inside – breakfast all day!
Breakfast was great. Also, it meant I could avoid that side trip to Chester to not enjoy that nasty place I tried four years ago, the Copper Kettle.
I have three options for how to proceed today:
- Up and over – follow 89 north through Lassen Park, then take 44 west to Redding
- Over and up – take 36 west to Red Bluff, then the interstate north to Redding.
- Straight but curvy – take 36 to a teeny little country road that cuts northwest up to 44.
1 is the most scenic, 2 is the least scenic, 3 is way less as the crow flies … I decide to give 3 a try … took the cutoff at Lanes Valley Road (to Wildcat Road to Black Butte Road). The first part was a lot of fun, and I was feeling pretty good about my choice until the last 8 miles or so, which were very narrow and windy and steep upward, so I re-climbed to about 3,000′ only to immediately coast back down to Redding. Interesting, but I’ll probably just take the main road next time and avoid all the up and down. I am glad the AAA maps kind of highlight these options though, let me give myself a different look every now and then.
The last few days of moderate weather have left me unprepared for the oven that is greater Redding. Very hot and very dry and moderately windy … Fire Weather!
I’m still kinda full from breakfast back at the lake, but the allure of In’nOut is too strong – double burger and fries, same as it ever was! Also, the chance to hang at Brew was not to be missed, so over the bridge and miss a turn in the one-way maze, as usual. The decaf Americano I got seemed like a good idea but did not sit well that evening.
On the big hill on 299 after the lake was a really long traffic stop – turn off the engine and read a chapter of the book kind of long. It was annoying, but didn’t make a lot of difference in the long run, because I still got a spot in my campground, which is probably exactly the spot I woulda gotten a half hour sooner.
WHUFU page for: Pigeon Point Campground
On a bend in the Trinity River. The main deal here is the heavily used boat ramp, I think the campground was built as an adjunct to it. Just seven sites, a couple of which are really nice.
Busy Route 299 is only 30 yards away, so when a truck passes you hear it. Fortunately, the road is not busy after dark.
Not quite as torrid as Redding, but still pretty darned hot until the sun goes down.
tonight:
Arrived 6-ish on Friday evening, so all the usual good spots are taken. So I am trying Site 1, tucked away in its own little ravine near the entrance. The feature here is that the benchs on the patio outside the restrooms are my own private party area.
The last few days of moderate weather have lreft me unprepared for the oven that is greater Redding. Very hot and very dry and moderately windy ... Fire Weather!
As with the other times I’ve been here, it’s so warm and bug-free that I fall asleep with the van door open. Usually either the bugs or the temperature or the neighbors forestall this, but not at this spot.
Saturday
Yelp in Redding had told me that there was an espresso place not too far west, so I resolved to hit that this morning. I did and it was deeelightful – called I believe the Strawhouse. I keep wanting to put a “berry” in there, but I think it’s what I said.
Really pleasant place – order inside, espresso, goodies and lunch (and beer!), and take it out to the patio, with a wide view of the river and a series of bird feeders in the row of trees between. Hummingbird feeders, grain feeders and suet feeders, to get the whole range of birdies. The goldfinch feeder would have 8-10 of them on it at a time … until a jay or a starling kicked ’em off to pick at their leftovers.
On my way into Eureka I do a drive-through on Blue Lake, Martha’s new must-have place to move to. I didn’t quite get the charm. All I saw was a shabby little hippie-burnout NorCal enclave left over from the 70’s. A few houses with new paint jobs were the only visible sign that gentrification is under way here, which Martha sez is totally a fact. The Blue Lake Casino did have the cheapest diesel in the area according to GasBuddy … and we will need the cheap gas if we live all the way out here!
Sunday – Tuesday
On Sunday we all just hung out, the boys played ball, we got cook-at-home pizza from Babe’s (much cheaper) and that was that.
This week Ty starts a basketball camp, so he’s gone till 4:30. We shop some, go to Katie’s new shop, Because Coffee most days, did a nice long, back way through the country, trip to Blue Lake were we even swam in the Mad River! Then I decided that Wednesday would be the day I take off for a little Oregon driveabout.