Friday was a longer drive day, so we started with a quick trip to a beach (we are at too many to count) for some Emma zoomies. Remy and dad have taken to drawing very large pictures in the sand.
We stopped in Trinidad for breakfast at a cozy little cafe, although it was quite chilly outside. Chilly mornings are not something we've been able to outrun yet. We dated not dawdle too long as we wanted to try and get to the small model train museum in Fort Bragg before it closed. The timing was going to be tight.
When we left Whidbey the wildfire smoke was just starting to clear, and thus far we hadn't encountered much that we were aware of. However, for an hour of our drive today we were going through very thick smoke, so much so that it was obscuring visibility. We had the windows cranked up and wore our masks in the car. Gross.
About halfway through our drive Dad made his first driving blunder (certainly not the last). There was a detour sign, and not wanting to get stuck on the highway without being able to turn around, Dad exited the highway. It turns out the detour was for bikes... And the on ramp in the direction we wanted to go was also closed. Bummer. This is a good point too mention that we haven't had cell reception for a large portion of our drive down the coast. We pivoted and decided to drive down the Avenue of the Giants. This road winds through a redwood forest parallel to the highway. When I say winds I mean it. Some of the tree trunks are right up against the road. We also noticed that the smoke was considerably lessened among the trees we weren't sure if the redwoods we soaking it up or if it didn't descend down through the branches While our detour was very pretty, we lost quite a bit of time getting back to the highway, so we nixxed the model train museum.
We drove on highway 101 a bit further before exciting to highway 1. This is the slowest, winding-est road in existence. It is doublely so with a trailer. I haven't decided which is worse, the labored slow-as-molasses climb up, or the jittery, rocking, brakes off brakes on descent. Neither was fun and we had to pull over about one million times to let other people pass. We are very slow.
We made it through eventually and stopped at a scenic vista to stretch our legs. It was scenic, and, well, scenic. There was an older wan at the vista playing the guitar while her partner filmed her with the ocean as a background. She was either playing the worlds longest song or had to do many, many takes. She was going when we arrived and still going when we left. I hope that Remy peeing in the background didn't ruin her shot.
Just before Fort Bragg we stopped at a sea glass beach. There was a lot of sea glass and some very cool rocks that looked like miniature canyons. Remy practiced for the grand canyon by jumping into them. 😀
We finally made it to our campsite. this one was a little different as we were at a hip camp (air BNB but for camping) instead of an RV park. This meant a bit more work to get into our spot. The hill leading up to the property was gravel, and the truck was having trouble with traction. No problem, we will just use 4 wheel drive! This worked fine until we got to the top and tried to shift out of the wheel drive. We are unclear what happened exactly, perhaps we were still on a bit of an incline, but when we tried to shift to 2 wheel drive there was the most awful grinding noise. Everyone in the car thought that the transmission had dropped out the bottom of the truck. We left things in 4 wheel drive and proceeded to our site. We had to back in, and when shifting into reverse we had another terrible grinding noise. Not great sounding. After finally getting unhitched Dad got out the manual. It was very clear that the gears can get stuck and gave steps for how to fix it. Dad had already tried these steps, the truck display tells you what to do, but we tried them again. This time things seemed to resolve and we didn't encounter any more issues. Fingers crossed it wasn't anything serious.
Everyone was a bit high strung after this incident but we got In the truck and went to Mendocino headlands state park for a walk on the cliffs. We also found some steps down to a beach for more zoomies and sand drawings. For dinner went to a nice Italian restaurant. Remy was disappointed that our late arrival likely meant we missed ice cream, but it turned out they were open until 8pm! His evening was saved.
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