It's August 4th and We are Back on the Road

Well it took us two months to get everything done that needed to get done at home and to the Rv but it's all done now and we are back on the beautiful highways of the west coast.  We left Willits, CA this morning at around 10 am and heading north drove right into Laytonville, CA. which is on fire. Not the town but all around it.  Two base camps are set up in town for the firefighters.  I couldn't get a picture of the first one but did manage to get a picture of the helicopter base camp.

Laytonville was a busy place.  Smoke was so thick that you could taste it.  But that wasn't the worst of it, just a few more miles north of there around Bell Springs Road the smoke was so thick that visibility was down to about 100'.  Couldn't even see the signs along the highway.  

The firefighters deserve a HUGE THANK YOU for all their hard work.

It took us 3 driving hours to drive out of all that smoke.  

My friends that live in Dos Rios and Piercy probably have lots of smoke in their area.  My wish is that the wind will blow it all away.

Away from the smoke and on to Eureka, CA.  where we found a free or dry camping or boondocking spot, places where you can park for the night and not have to pay.  A friend from the internet, Nan suggested a parking lot near the harbor but when we got there it clearly said No Overnight Parking so on we went to the yacht harbor.  I could see on google map that there were several parking lots and not to many cars so we drove over the bridge to take a look.  Well getting there was half the fun.  On the way the road goes through a tunnel with only 10' 2" clearance.  I'm 11.5' tall.  Mom starts yelling stop stop low clearance.  I stop get out and look the situation over.  There is no way we can go through that tunnel and the street is to narrow to turn this rig around.  The only thing to do is to back up about 50' back to the intersection.  Which we did, with most people giving me lots of room.  Once back on the main road I was going to go on till I got to a place to turn around and approach the it from the other direction but when I got out on the road I saw that because there was no traffic coming I could make a left turn that was only slightly illegal.  Which is what I did.  The harbor parking lots are great.  Practically empty and very quiet.  STOP THE PRESSES.  At 7:45 we were run out of the harbor, on to second choice, St. Joseph's Hospital parking lot.  I knew how to get there so off we went.

I was able to walk around the harbor and smell the salt air and see some great old boats.  Kind of reminded me of when I lived in Santa Cruz, CA  in the 1970's and several of my friends were fisherman. I spent many hours hanging out at the harbor doing the things that fisherman do.  And that's enough said of that.

Tomorrow we will continue our trek up the coast and on into Oregon.

See you later.

Evie