7-11-2021 TRINIDAD, CA

 Mileage-wise, it wasn’t a long trip from Grants Pass to Trinidad, only 150 miles, but ultimately, the travel time was 5 hours.  The route was generally west and then southward and it was twisty. 

The map looks like intestines.  It was also very smoky from all the wildfires.  The sky was brown.  Rob drove the first part through what we thought was the worst of the up-down-snaky-smoky part, largely because I’m a chicken.  Then he turned the wheel over to me.  Oh no.  It was even twistier and upsy-downsy and then, My God, the sign said, “road narrows.”  What?  Narrows to what, for Godssake?!  Well, it narrowed.  Not only were my palms sweaty, even my feet were sweaty. 

 

We had no idea that part of our route would take us through the redwoods.  Breathtaking, spectacular, massive, majestic giants they are.  Thousands of years old.  Seedlings when Jesus Christ walked the earth.  The diameter of a few of them was about 15 feet and they are more than 200 feet tall.  Indeed, God’s little garden.   At one point our narrow road ran between two of these giants whose trunks were trimmed away from the road to create just enough clearance for vehicles.

 

The boys

We also had no idea that we would encounter a herd of elk!  The girls were all on one side of the road and the boys were all gathered on the other, kind of an Elks Club, in a way.  But then, the girls decided to join the boys.  You humans, deal with it!

The girls

"I need to go see the boys."  (or... Why did the 
elk cross the road?)

 

It was foggy and cold along the coast.  I am not familiar with the north coast of CA so I do not know if this is typical for July but, in sum, I don’t want to live here.  We arrived at our new rv park, “Sounds of the Sea,” at about 4PM, just in time for toonies.  It took just a bit of maneuvering to park the beast in the sardine can that was allotted to us.  The road up to our site was like a bike path or a slightly wide sidewalk.  “Sounds of the Sea?”  The only sounds we heard were the neighbors’ barking dogs.  Our slot is equivalent to an rv storage area.  We are not and could not get level, even with all the boards we haul.  Indoors, we walk uphill to get to our bedroom and the frig door keeps wanting to fall open.    Here’s the topper:  the restrooms are closed due to Covid.  This may be turning out to be a California thing.  I’ve been in California for about 72 hours and I’m up to here with it.  I’m not really good with “stupid.”  (Or maybe they are just sly?  They don’t have to clean their bathrooms.  Do we get a refund?)  On to more pleasant things that turn Grumpy into Happy.

Sardine-pack at "Sounds of the Sea RV Park"

 

The village in the cove here was originally named Tsurai.  A prehistoric Indian tribe, the Yurok, lived here in cottages hewn from the wood of the redwoods.  Their predominant occupation was whaling.  Spaniards Bodega and Heceta “discovered” the Yurok and their village in June, 1775 and began to infiltrate.  Turns out Bodega and Heceta were not the first guys to “discover” Tsurai but they were the first to land here.  They anchored on June 11, 1775, Trinity Sunday, and conducted a “formal act of possession” for Spain.  They erected a little cross and dedicated it to King Carlos of Spain.  They christened the area La Santisima Trinidad.  The Yurok gave up and disappeared by 1916.  In 1922, 333 humpback whales and one sperm whale were harvested in the local waters for the purposes of marketing the whale oil.  I suppose later, the Americans rode into town.  And there you have it… the Reader’s Digest Version of Trinidad, California.

Memorial monument to those lost
at sea - and Rob walking down the lane 

The bay at Trinidad

The fishing boats in the bay at Trinidad

 

In the sunroom at the Seascape 

Seascape is a cute little tiny restaurant near the water on the bay in Trinidad.  The sun burned off some of the fog by the afternoon and we had an early seafood dinner in the sunroom at Seascape.  Then, we strolled on the pier and breathed the salty air for a while.  Time to drift home and relax for the evening.

The Seascape from the pier