Redwood Respite

Well, we ended up staying another two days in Albion, CA due to having to order the starter for our Saturn and then having it installed.  It was frustrating to have to rely on a shop to do a relatively simple job like removing and replacing a starter but, not much I could do about it.  I could've saved over $200 by doing it myself.  More maintenance problems cropped up before we departed!  The die cast bracket that holds the lower awning arm to the motor home broke!  Uggh!  So, I secured it using parachute cord and zip ties.  I told the girls that by the time we end up back in P.C. we will be skidding in being held together with bailing wire, chewing gum and duct tape!  Man, we laughed that it was just like stuff in the movie R.V.!!! Likewise, we felt like we were on the "dark side" of the Moon because we had zero cell service the whole week.  We did have wifi however, we could not call or text anyone, which made it hard to coordinate anything. A note for our friends, if you find that you don't get a response from us for a couple of days, try another means like e-mail, Face book, or text. Sometimes we have one and not the other.  And if you don't get a response at all, then we are truly out in the boonies for awhile. It's not that we have written ya off or drove off the edge! If it's more than a week...send out the search teams!!!!
Once we finally pressed on outta Albion, on this leg of our journey, we continued up the California coastline along Highway 1 and 101.  Again, it was an impressive display of some of the most beautiful coastline vistas, anywhere in the world!  We landed just north of the town of Crescent City, CA.  It was a mixture  rain and sun for our stay here, amongst the redwood groves. Enjoy!

This is why we came here.  We came to visit this park which is a combined State and National park that protects over 45% of the remaining old growth redwood trees.  The combined parks are comprised of about 133,000 acres of which about 39,000 acres are covered by the giant redwood trees (Sequoia semperviens) 

Here we are camped out in amongst some massive redwoods at a private campground just north of Jedediah Smith State & National Park.  It was a very nice and quite park.  We welcomed the lack of wind as compared to the flats of Albion!

Our first night here we had constant rain and pretty much the entire rest of the next day too.  We spent the day catching up on laundry, homework and after "school" the girls break out a puzzle. It was nice to get some things done that we couldn't this past week...like call folks on the phone!

We took a hike down the Stout Memorial Grove trail.  This section of the park  is named after Jedediah Smith, who was one of the first white explorers to travel to California over-land in 1826.

The girls marvel at the massive redwoods that have fallen across the trail.

Heidi and Hailey pose with a downed redwood that was cut to allow passage along the path.

Hailey...if it can be climbed...she will try it. Gotta keep an eye on this one!

Hailey goes over her Jr. Ranger assignments with Stacey as we explore the trail.  She was tasked to find various plants and animals within the park and recorded them, in order to qualify as a Redwood's Jr. Ranger.

Heidi poses for me down by the West Branch of the South Fork river. This was a great place to skip stones!  Tons of stones and nice wide smooth river.  We had  a lot of fun here!

Team Breitmann attempts to encircle a giant redwood....no way!  We could not even see the top of this tree.  Some of these trees were over 300 feet tall!  We felt like ants among giants.  We learned that some of the scenes from the movies: Return of the Jedi and Jurassic Park were filmed in these forests.  

Hailey finds an old friend that she first saw in Russian Gulch near Mendocino. We learned that these slugs are called Banana Slugs and are the second largest slugs in the world.  Native American Indians used the secretions of these to treat sore throats as it will cause numbness in the mouth/throat for 20 minutes.

This a view from Klamath Overlook, which over looks the mouth of the Klamath river as it encounters the Pacific.  While we were here, I was glad that I brought along binoculars because we got the privilege to not only see Sea Lions in the surf but, we also saw a Grey Whale hanging out here!  The whale even breached four times for us..a rare sight indeed!

We came across this cross on our way up the south bluff of the Klamath river.  It was built to stay that is for sure because it is two steel girders set in concrete.  No inscription just standing here.  Pretty neat. 

I thought of my time in the Air Force as an "Air Defender" when we came across the B-71 Early Warning Site.  During World War II, as a result of the attack on Pearl, the necessity of guarding American coastlines became more urgent on the Pacific Coast than on the Atlantic. The threat was further demonstrated when a Japanese submarine shelled an oil refinery north of Santa Barbara, California, on February 23, 1942. Another Japanese submarine shelled Esteven Point in British Columbia, Canada, on June 20, 1942, and again at Fort Stevens, Washington, on July 21, 1942. On September 9, 1942, a Japanese submarine-launched aircraft dropped incendiary bombs on Oregon forests roughly 40 miles north of the Klamath River. The radar station south of the Klamath River, in what is now Redwood National Park, was built in late 1942 and early 1943 as the northernmost California station in a network of 72 proposed stations, 65 of which were actually built, stretching from the Canadian border into Mexico. The Klamath station was designated by memorandum dated November 6, 1942, from the Office of the Commanding General, IV Fighter Command, as Station B-71, named "Trinidad." It was also referred to as the "Klamath River" station. The Klamath River Radar Station B-71 in Redwood National Park,  is a rare survivor of a World War II early-warning radar station, the first step toward the more sophisticated and pioneering early-warning radar defense network. Rather than using camouflage materials, the buildings of Radar Station B-71 were constructed to resemble farm buildings to disguise their true purpose. The station consists of three buildings: a power building disguised as a farmhouse, an operations building disguised as a barn and a functional wood frame two-stall privy or outhouse, now a partially collapsed ruin. The two major buildings were constructed for the Army by a private contractor specifically for the early warning aircraft station, and consist of block walls roughly two feet thick covered with wood-framed gable roofs with wood shingle finish.

The view from B-71 radar station.

Hailey found a bunch of these snails around the B-71 radar site.  They were HUGE!

Hailey, once again earns another Jr. Ranger badge as an official Redwoods National Park Jr. Ranger.  Next stop...Crater Lake National Park.  Look out Oregon, here we come!  God, willing and the creek don't rise!