Posted by Karen on 28-May-2010
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I arrived in Eureka last night and settled in at the Redwood Acres Fairground for the long weekend. Today I headed north towards Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and along the way I stopped in McKinleyville for a geocache at the World’s Largest Totem Pole and boy is it tall! Just before the park I spotted a herd of Roosevelt Elk resting in a field and I’m glad I stopped to view them because they certainly weren’t at the designated viewing area on Davison Road in the park (maybe they didn’t get the memo about where to be, hmm). Davison Road took me to Gold Bluff’s Beach and finally to Fern Canyon. Fern Canyon is where parts of Jurassic Park 2, The Lost World were filmed and yes, it does all look very pre-historic. Fern Canyon is just that, a tall narrow canyon will lots of ferns growing up the canyon walls. At this time of year, the creek flowing through the canyon is still flowing pretty good and after about 5 minutes I gave up any notion of being able to dodge the water and resigned my self to just having wet feet, but it’s worth it. At the trail head, I met another solo hiker with a camera named Christina and so we headed off together to walk the canyon. The canyon is only about 1/3 of a mile long, but it’s a very cool walk. At the end of the canyon, I looped around to another (dry) trail and made my way back to the SUV. At the parking lot, there were a couple of Roosevelt Elk grazing and you realize that they really are big animals when you’re semi-close to them. On the way back to the trailer, I stopped and enjoyed a bit of the sunset in Trinidad at the memorial lighthouse.
Posted by Karen on 15-May-2010
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After enjoying all the wood carvings and kissing the bear, Pauline and I took a left turn and headed towards the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park and the coast. Sinkyone is one of the most remote state parks I’ve visited; to reach the north entrance of the park you traverse through the mountains of the King Range Conservation area and the last 3.5 miles are a narrow, winding pot-hole-filled dirt road. Pauline was a trooper and didn’t show any nervousness peering down the steep embankments on her side of the SUV, but she did show excitement when she spotted the heard of Roosevelt Elk below us. We arrive at the visitor center and after a nice chat with the park hosts, we enjoy lunch in the barn protected from the ocean breeze. Afterwards, we continued along the coast road and when it ended, we hiked down to Bear Harbor, a tiny black sands beach that’s very pretty. We explored it for awhile, enjoyed talking with some folks that were camping out there and then as we were leaving, Pauline, said get ready to take the picture when I fall into the water while crossing this creek to get back out… I had the camera aimed, but she never fell, handled the log hopping like a pro actually! On the way out, we took the road past Shelter Cove to see the lighthouse and then it was back across the mountain to our campsite.
Posted by Karen on 06-Mar-2010
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Lori and I headed to the coast for the maiden voyage of my new-to-me Aliner trailer. We camped at Half Moon Bay State Beach, which is camping right next to the ocean. Setting up the trailer was a breeze, even in the ocean breeze. After relaxing a bit, we headed north a few miles to enjoy sunset at the Point Montara Light Station, which was established in 1900. Back at camp, we just hung out and enjoyed a lovely spring weather evening and sounds of the ocean next to us. After breaking down the trailer Sunday morning, we did some tidepooling at the James Fitzgerald Marine Reserve in Moss Beach. Tidepooling is fun because you’ll never know what the ocean will reveal trapped in the rocks during low tide; I found one large starfish, several anemones, and pretty rocks. We enjoyed fresh fish and chips over at Princeton Seafood Company on Pillar Point Harbor and then we headed home feeling rested and refreshed.
Posted by Karen on 26-May-2007
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My intent Saturday morning was to try and find the 2007 Kinetic Grand Championship Race and watch it. The Kinetic Sculpture Race is a wacky race that combines art sculptures with engineering ingenuity. The vehicles can only be powered by human power–no motors. The vehicles must be able to go over land, water, sand and mud… and should look good doing it. The Kinetic Kingdom provides an overview of what the race is about.
I dilly-dallied around Saturday morning, had a late breakfast, explored the quaint seaside town of Trinidad and ended up missing the race start in the town square of Arcata. By the time I got there, there didn’t appear to be any sign that a race had happened, so I figured it didn’t go off this year. Up until two weeks ago, the web page I’d found still said “hopefully the race will occur”, so I wasn’t totally surprised, but oh well, I can have fun around the area. I then toddled down the coast to explore Eureka and as I’m walking around old town, I keep hearing something over a loud speaker, so I head in that direction… and guess what–I find the finish line of the first day of the Kinetic Sculpture Race happening in Eureka Old Town Square. KHUM Radio was out there doing the MC’ing duties. So I hung out and watched the racers come in after the first leg of the race. There was a circus act entertaining the crowd and just a general sense of fun in the square. I saw the Rutabaga Queens; this year, Enchantress Emma took the reigns from Queen Foxy Biloxi and they were all costumed out. I got a copy of the race map and now knew where and when to be to watch the start of day 2, the water launching. Sunday morning, I’m up and don’t dilly-dally and make my way over to the launching area and secure my spot on the rocks to watch the race machines enter the bay to begin the several mile long water portion of the race. Now somewhere out here, I changed photo memory cards and lost the card that had all my day one pictures on it. *dismay* Bummer… I have looked high and low, but it’s gone. *sad* Ahhh well, it was a fun morning. It was appropriate that “Tall-E-Rodger”, a pirate vessel, was the first and only entry to go head-over-heels into the water at the beginning of the water entry on day 2, so he was the winner of the Golden Flipper Award for being the first sculpture to flip over in the Bay. And lots of other people took pictures and videos of the Kinetic Sculpture Race: (http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kineticrace). Do you see me sitting on the rocks in this video? I’m one of those blurs sitting on the rocks! LOL
When the launch was over, I checked out a few of Eureka’s landmark buildings and then I headed north and took a little hike in the redwood forest. A geocache led me to a section of the redwoods that are less visited and what a difference it makes taking a walk in the non-tourist section.. very lovely, very awe-inspiring. Afterwards, I drove over to Crescent City and took some sunset shots of the Battery Point Lighthouse and the city from across the harbor.
It was a fun weekend and here are the winners of the race: http://khumksr.blogspot.com/2007/05/kinetic-award-results.html
