Redwoods – Jedediah Smith State Park (Klamath, CA)

We got a somewhat late start on this lazy foggy Saturday morning. We didn’t leave the Elks Lodge in Brookings, OR until almost noon.

If it seems like we are moving along from place to place at a fast pace – it’s because we are. We want to be back in Colorado by October because our son William is coming in from Germany for a three week visit with his girlfriend. He intends to use our house in Colorado Springs as a jumping off point to visit the area.

Anyway, just South of town we crossed into sunny California – only it wasn’t very sunny today.

About 25 miles later, as we got close to Crescent City we spotted the signs for the Redwood National and State Forest Visitor Center, so we pulled into an empty lot out front and went inside for information on the Redwood Forests. We’ve never been here before and wanted to get the scoop on what is where – and more importantly, where we can go in the big rig.

The park rangers inside were very helpful and gave us a tip about the Jedediah Smith Redwoods which is part of the Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park. They told us about a nice drive on Howland Hill Road just outside of town here with a highly recommended “must-see” hike through the Stout Memorial Grove. And they were right – it was truly awe-inspiring! The intended destination was definitely not big-rig friendly, so we unhooked the truck and left the Urban Escape Vehicle in the parking lot behind the building.

Once on Howland Hill Road, the pavement quickly turned to dirt and it got very narrow. I kept wondering why they didn’t make this a one-way road through here, because we had to back up or pull off on the side more than a few times to let others pass, and vice versa.

Wow… these redwoods are awesome! They don’t grow trees like this in Colorado.

At one point, out in the middle of the forest, we met up with some other RV’ers from Colorado that we recognized from our stay at an Elks Lodge in Kelso/Longview some weeks ago. Small RV world 🙂 They told us they were staying in Klamath at the Chinook RV Resort, and recommended it to us for tonight’s destination. We thanked them and since we (surprisingly) had a cell-phone signal, I called and made a reservation for us to arrive later today. With that out of the way, we parted ways and continued our scenic drive.

Here are the pictures of our hike at Stout Grove. All I can say is WOW! The pictures don’t do justice to the magnificence of these redwoods.

After our tour of the redwoods here near Crescent City, we hooked the truck back up to the Coach and headed on South to Klamath. We felt lucky that we had a little sun while we were in the woods because the fog seemed to roll in just as we hit the Pacific Coast Highway again.

We arrived at our destination and decided to stay for two nights. Since this is a Passport America park, we only had to pay $15 per night. The camp host directed us to a 30amp hook-up spot next to the river, which we found out later wasn’t such a good thing… Stilla put a load of clothes into our Splendide washer/dryer combo and the motorhome’s Surge-Guard kept cycling on and off. The display for the Surge-Guard flashed the warning “Open Ground” and “Check Wiring” a few times, but it never popped the circuit breaker, it just kept switching power from the park pedestal to our inverter… back and forth. Since it was late and the office was closed, we just unplugged and ran the generator to finish our load of clothes. Once our clothes were done, I tried plugging into park power again and it kept doing the same thing, even when I had everything turned off , and I mean everything: no TV; no surround sound; no Direct-TV; no AC or heater; no Keurig coffee maker; nothing plugged into any outlets; etc., The only items drawing power would be the inverter/charger itself and the residential refrigerator, and I have to leave those on. So I unplugged again and we just boondocked for the night. I figured we would deal with it in the morning. More to follow on this.

Meanwhile, here are some pics of our current location.