I am squeezing in one more trip with a functioning water system before I drain it for the winter. The idea is to get out of Reno before it got too cold and head over the mountains to balmy California. This plan has FAILed on its first contact with reality:
- It got cold quicker than I planned.
- It got way colder than the forecast.
- After the Monday night snowstorm, my power went out for almost two days – 6-sh Monday evening to noon-ish Wednesday. I was planning to leave on Wednesday, but it seemed like a bad idea to leave with the power off. Indeed, when it did come back on, a lot of random powered things were on that I wouldn’t have wanted to just pop on in a house that would be empty for a couple of weeks.
It was a crisp 53° in my bedroom Wednesday morning! Hard to leave the blankets, then hard to think straight when you are trying to function in your house freezing you ass off.
The power returned late enough in the short day to necessitate staying Wednesday night … which was the coldest night of the year so far- down to the neighborhood of 19°. It’s not clear yet if any of the van plumbing did explode, but if it did, that one extra night was the proverbial straw..
Thursday (Nov 12)
Ahh electricity … never have I loved crappy forced air heating quite so much! By morning my water heater had amassed a shower and shave’s worth of hot water. This is altogether a much more orderly and civilized way to leave than departing in frigid no-shower mid-blackout as I would have done yesterday.
I get going around noon. Packing is easy since I’ve been doing it piecemeal for the last two days. Clean the kitchen, clean the bathroom, order tonight’s sando to pick up at Newman’s, and I’m outta here!
I’ve been so efficient that I have time to sit down for a nice breakfast somewhere. I decide to give the Squeeze Inn a chance on my way outta town. It was really nice to see Alberto, but I wasn’t that impressed with the restaurant. Big Ed’s offers a much better price point and is less pretentious about it.
My day times out about the way it always does on the road. I pulled into my usual spot at Cave Campground around 4:30, which this time of year is like a half hour before sunset.
WHUFU page for: Cave Campground
Smack on the way from Reno to Eureka, where CA 44 meets CA 89.
A geologically interesting valley. A giant, recent lava flow that feels like the recovering disaster area it is. The Lava Cave is a short walk across the highway.
The Forest Service keeps one campground open all winter, and it is this one.
A deep blanket of pine needles makes it quiet except for the occasional truck on 89.
tonight:
ah, off season again. This is such a pretty, calming place in the winter. It gets dark at 4:30, but it pretty nice before that. 32° at 6pm, gonna get cold tonight.!
It’s really pretty here, although fucking cold. There’s just enough frigid daylight left to putter around the creek for a while, take a few pictures and enjoy the perfection of Hat Creek.
Around 5-ish it’s too fucking cold to do anything other than nestle into the cozy van for the next 15-18 hours, sigh… Winter camping during Standard Time involves way too much inside time. On the road I certainly need to get up earlier to maximize my daylight.
Friday
Up early-ish, still fucking cold. It warms up into the 40’s pretty quickly I’m happy to say. I admire the rapids from the snow-covered footbridge one more time, soak up the sun and pretend to meditate listening to the water on a stump by the river. I take a short slog through the snow upriver to the wheelchair platform (not a good day for my low top waterproof shoes), then I hit that snowy road and hope it doesn’t hit back.
Quality time with the Redding hipsters at Brew :). Half a sando at Anita’s, a somewhat disappointing place. Head out of town of over the hill. A first for me, no roadwork stoppages on 299 today! I am at my destination Pigeon Point by about 4:30 … again.
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:
Site 2 is ok. It's up on the little knoll, so it gets a little more light than my usual sites #1 or #6. Convenient to the bathroom, although that is thankfully not as big an issue as it was last trip.
Morning: But it's location makes it EVEN CLOSER to busy 299, so trucks using their air brakes can jolt you right out of a deep sleep.
New pro tip: This place might be full on a warm fall Friday night in fishing season! I got the last available site in this small campground. It’s odd, the parking spaces are all taken, and there are even a couple of tents, but right now, 1/2 hour after sunset (5:45) there are NO people! My working theory is that they are all going on an epic rafting trip tomorrow, and are off partying in some nearby outpost of civilization and will all arrive at once in an annoying explosion of drunkenness … then pass out. We’ll see.
Wrong, they were all out fishing. All the various campsite occupants filtered in between 6 and 7, and quietly built their little fires and went about their business – no partying.
My propane tank goes empty very early in the evening, so no heat. I am thankful that it’s not a real cold evening. This would’ve been a disaster last night. Heck, I spent a colder night than this three nights ago in my condo then the power went out!
Saturday – Thursday
Drive a mere ten miles to stop for coffee and a goody at Strawhouse, my favorite stopover on the Redding-Eureka run. Thus caffienated, for the next two hours drive straight to the Eureka U-Haul to get my propane fix … then four more miles to family time!
WHUFU page for: Martha's house #2
They moved from a tiny one bedroom on a busy corner to a more spacious two bedroom on a quiet cul de sac in a better neighborhood. Even better, there is an upstairs where I can:
1. sleep,
2. barricade the top of the stairs so the cat can't sleep with me.
So woo!
Sunday
Martha and I find me a Sunday Chronicle. My Sudoko needs are met for the next week! Later we take a short drive over to the coast with the purpose of getting Rylan to fall asleep. That’s the extent of our excitement for Sunday.
The actual beach is only about 6 miles from their house, straight across the causeway. We were mulling how crazy, expensive, and over-developed a place with this geography would be in SoCal or even Bay Area, instead of the remote north woods. Pretty cool.
I sleep in the van. It rains all night, and there is a massive downpour. I’m glad I’m here, nothing sweeter than listening to the rain pound on the metal roof of the van.
Monday
Tuesday
Let’s do it again. Coffee at Because Coffee, hang at the library for a while, back to the Safeway for a powerful giardia-fighting antibiotic (yes, giardia…) called in by my Reno doctor, home. They have friends over for taco Tuesday – very nice.
Wednesday
And again. Talk to the Nevada Disease Control doctor who follows up on every giardia case (a GOOD thing!). Coffee at Because Coffee, lunch at a perfectly fine Mexican place they never go to, finally avoid Safeway for a day, home. Tyler is between sports seasons – baseball and soccer over, basketball not yet started – so there are none of the usual practices and games to go to.
Thursday
One more time. Coffee at Because Coffee. I foolishly told Martha about the giardia thing and she is having a Defcon 4 freakout. I am to sleep in the van and leave tomorrow. She is making me feel like a diseased piece of crap, but I guess I understand.
Friday
Leave when the family does – actually leave right before the last family member, so they get to lock up and own the condition of the house when they get back. I had planned to dawdle till they left, to enjoy the quiet and take a shower in peace, but they were taking too long, and I was running out of daylight and overall this has turned out to be a much better plan.
I have budgeted enough time stop at the yummy breakfast place they never go to and load up on carbs and caffeine for my journey.
It’s been misty-gloomy for the last two days – normal Eureka weather they say, until the last couple of years which have been unseasonably dry. My weather app shows sunny weather in the interior, and sure enough, about 12 miles inland from Blue Lake the clouds disappear and I have the unfamiliar sensation of sun in my eyes.
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:
My favorite site #1 is taken, but everything else is available, including #3, the palatial hilltop, 3-table, 2 parking place site by the bathrooms that has never been unoccupied in all my other visits. It's too much campsite for me, but I do take #5, which shares its parking area. The actual site 5 which belongs to my parking spot - table plus tent area - is 30 yds away down the road and right on a path. I don't even bother, but instead enjoy a beautiful waxing gibbous moon from rivermost table at the big site.
Exactly one week after my stopover here last Friday, and the vibe is quite different. Still plenty of fishermen in the day lot, but only one campsite taken when I arrive. While I’m registering a bunch of fisher-dudes arrive in two pickups towing a pontoon boat. They take over the lower camping area. I am very appreciative that they did that instead of taking the group site I’m hanging out at, because they are playing bad music and being happy loud. So bless them for giving me a break!
Saturday
I sit and read for while at my site 5 picnic table, which commands a pretty little bend in the river. I’m so glad I did! My campground fisherman buddies are out there in their boat, one of them paddling their little pontoon boat upstream for a while, then guiding it as it floats downstream, the other two guys casting their flies with great concentration and as fast as they can. It’s not a a very long stretch of slow, calm water to cruise in, so they go back and forth past my spot about five times. Three small deer are nibbling the scrub brush and getting quite close, since I’m sitting quietly; the occasional osprey or raptor cruising high above. Thinking lovely thoughts like “that’s why I do this, for moments like this!”
It’s over an hour to get from here to Redding, a lot of curvy driving to do before my coffee. But I am feeling just so darned perky since these antibiotics started really kicking in that I don’t care! Also, it’s Saturday so the heavy equipment is tucked away, the Caltrans workers are home drinking beer, so there are no stupid roadwork stoppages!
Brew is nearly deserted on Saturday afternoon. I spend an hour or so there, because I can.
Go to Safeway. Get some diesel at the super-bargain place on 273. Endure the late-afternoon (at 3:45!) sun hammering the right side of my face on the freeway.Cruise Red Bluff a bit, then motor down Sales Road along the east side of the Sacramento River to the anomalous National Forest campground tucked away down here by the abandoned dam. Here is what I wrote the first time I stayed here, 3 1/2 years ago in August:
WHUFU page for: Sycamore Grove Campground
A lonely outpost of Mendocino National Forest - a little chunk of federal land next to the diversion dam. The parking lots are huge, making it seem like it was full of action back when the dam was being used create the diversionary lake. Emptying the dam a couple of decades ago was sad for the boaters of Red Bluff, but great for the salmon, who were being killed off by the salmon ladder.
This beautiful campground suffers from being too close to the town of Red Bluff. The bathroom has a security code to prevent random weirdos from moving in.
tonight:
Six miles from Red Bluff, yet strangely empty on a hot August Wednesday. Super nice place. A lonely outpost of Mendocino National Forest - a little chunk of federal land next to the diversion dam. The parking lots are huge, making it seem like it was full of action back when the dam was being used create the diversionary lake. Shutting it down a couple of decades ago was sad for the boaters of Red Bluff, but great for the salmon, who were being killed off by the salmon ladder.
This was tonight’s experience:
WHUFU page for: Sycamore Grove Campground
A lonely outpost of Mendocino National Forest - a little chunk of federal land next to the diversion dam. The parking lots are huge, making it seem like it was full of action back when the dam was being used create the diversionary lake. Emptying the dam a couple of decades ago was sad for the boaters of Red Bluff, but great for the salmon, who were being killed off by the salmon ladder.
This beautiful campground suffers from being too close to the town of Red Bluff. The bathroom has a security code to prevent random weirdos from moving in.
tonight:
Fate brings me here on a warm November Saturday night, and it's pretty busy. The two sites nearest me are couples making a quick fire then sleeping in their small cars ... like you'd expect at a cheap-ish campground near the interstate.
The river and the strange derelict de-comissioned dam are still awesome.
For the first time I can see why they have a keycode on the bathroom. It's at the riverside edge of the campground, backing up to a day-use lot which contained some sketchy folks when I walked through
Sunday
On Sunday morning another (mildly) annoying factor presents itself, namely that the road 40 yds away is quite busy with trucks towing boats and families going to/from the boat launch. The outward edge of my favorite site #2 has a really pleasant vista onto the river bottom floodplain savannah, but today there’s all these darned vehicles rumbling past. If it’s true that you can rate the quality of your life by the fineness of your complaints than I must be doing pretty good right now. :)
I dawdle and read and clean the van and do tai chi till noon-ish, then get going. I berate myself mildly for not punting some of that stuff and doing the 2-ish mile loop hike they have here, complete with pamphlet for the info-stops. But I didn’t, so here we go.
I snag my Sunday Chronicle at only the third gas station mart I stopped at! This is very pleasing because it means I don’t have to stop at any more gas marts! I take back roads about half way to Chico before plugging into busy, straight, speedy Route 99E, the backbone of the east Central Valley. The back road was fun – surrounded by miles of walnut orchards where were a pretty golden yellow. Also I fell a little in love with the tiny town of Tehama, right at a quiet bridge over the Sacramento. It seemed like a perfect little all-american place on this quiet Sunday.
Chico, ate breakfast at Martha’s favorite place, the Sin of Cortez (whatever that means). It’s a veggie-healthy kind of place, so the only recognizable item was the paleo breakfast – eggs, nice fat sausage, and steamed zucchini instead of potatoes, pretty good!
WHUFU page for: LLano Seco Unit
Infrastructure is all new they say. Pretty happening little spot on a warm November Sunday afternoon. Eight-ish vehicles there when I arrived. There's a bathroom and a viewing area at the parking lot.
There were lots of birds right there - mostly pintails, widgeons and shovellers. Also in the distance snow geese, the other goose, a flock of cranes overhead, and across the road, a flock of swans!
Then there's a short, 1/3 mile walk out to another viewing area. Pretty sweet little spot. On hte walk was a group of grazing curlews that were kind enough to not fly away as I walked pretty close.
I thought I was doing just a drive-by on my way to the main Sacto NWR auto loop, but this was so cool I spent the afternoon here.
tonight:
Infrastructure is all new they say. Pretty happening little spot on a warm November Sunday afternoon. Eight-ish vehicles there when I arrived. There's a bathroom and a viewing area at the parking lot.
There were lots of birds right there - mostly pintails, widgeons and shovellers. Also in the distance snow geese, the other goose, a flock of cranes overhead, and across the road, a flock of swans!
Then there's a short, 1/3 mile walk out to another viewing area. Pretty sweet little spot. On hte walk was a group of grazing curlews that were kind enough to not fly away as I walked pretty close.
I thought I was doing just a drive-by on my way to the main Sacto NWR auto loop, but this was so cool I spent the afternoon here.
I stayed on the platform quite late into the sunset, talking to a friendly old fellow from Chico. I would learn way more if I was less solitary and more chatty when I’m out and about, but my style is to keep to myself, so that’s what I usually do. The two guys I yakked with today upped my birder game a notch and filled in some local history. Chico seems like a nice place to live this time of year … summer, not so much.
When I left there were still a few rays for the first part of my drive, to pick up a little color on the flooded fields to the west of me, but the rest of the trip, a straight lines south, then west over the Sacto River at Butte City, then south again was dark. Dark is a good way to arrive at the Colusa Casino parking lot.
WHUFU page for: Colusa Casino
RV parking is way in the back of the parking lot ... That part of the lot is still gravel there and quite muddy in the rain.
Casino is cozy and not unpleasant. Restaurant and bar are just fine. Wifi is terrible except close to the coffee shop.
tonight:
Fall this time, not spring. Still a long, cold walk to the casino, still no Warriors games on their teevees. Appear to be installing new lights - ugh.
It’s actually pretty comfortable here. I always manage to be close enough to the edge to have an unobstructed view of the orchards next door – peach, pecan? Pecan I think.
Monday
Oh sigh… The little construction zones sprinkled around the parking lot are new streetlights every 40 yards or so. That’s gonna suck.
If the snow wasn’t supposed to be flying in tomorrow I would hang around here another day and do the Sacto NWR auto tour, but that is is the forecast, so the better part of valor is to head over the passes while the sun is still shining today. First to Granzella’s for coffee and wifi, thence to one more refuge:
WHUFU page for: Colusa NWR
Warm, clear fall day. Mostly pintails, with a sprinkling of shovellers and American wigeons. Some snowy egrets and one great heron.
There was a large flock of snow geese in their southeast corner. The tolerated me until I was about halfway past, but then somebody spooked and they took to the air by the thousands.
The night heron posse was at their usual hangout on the east side of the creek on the way out.
I got a good long l;ook at some kind of raptor. I'm guessing red tailed, but maybe a Cooper's hawk - it was more gray-ish than reddish ...
tonight:
Warm, clear fall day. Mostly pintails, with a sprinkling of shovellers and American wigeons. Some snowy egrets and one great heron.
There was a large flock of snow geese in their southeast corner. The tolerated me until I was about halfway past, but then somebody spooked and they took to the air by the thousands.
The night heron posse was at their usual hangout on the east side of the creek on the way out.
I got a good long l;ook at some kind of raptor. I'm guessing red tailed, but maybe a Cooper's hawk - it was more gray-ish than reddish ...
It was quite dramatic and beautiful when the snow geese took off. I wondered how many total calories of bird energy were burned when that one goose bolted and thus caused his ten thousand or so buddies to launch into the air.
I’m really enjoying the quiet and beauty, so I stay here in ‘leisure mode’ till about 1:30, when I switch to ‘getting home mode’. It’s about a three hour drive, so I know it will get dark on my high up I-80. But the roads will be clear.
I stop at my local Safeway, the forecast has me spooked enough to do my thanksgiving shopping tonight on the way home. I bought a frozen duck!
