It was 2 PM on Sunday before we got away from the park today.  We changed sites 3 more times before we solved our power problem that I described in yesterday’s post.

The camp host was very accommodating and moved me to another site, but it was just another 30 amp pedestal and I had the same problem as before.  The Surge-Guard display toggled between “No Ground” and “Check Wiring” and wouldn’t stay connected to shore power.  So the camp host found me another site but I had to wait for the current occupant to leave.  It was also a 30 amp site and once I was able to pull in and plug in, I still had the same problem.  At least this time, I didn’t put the jacks down or the slides out before I plugged in.

The camp host kept checking on me throughout the morning, as did several other overly-enthusiastic camp occupants… Nice folks here.  I had just resigned myself to “boondocking it” for the rest of today and tonight (I even warned my neighbor about running my generator) when finally – a 50 amp site opened up unexpectedly, and the camp host moved me in.  Everything worked fine on the 50 amp in site #1 🙂  I was really starting to worry that my problem was with the Coach and not the park power.  Although, I’ve never had problems on 30 amp power before, that is – other than tripping the breaker because we forgot to turn off the coffee pot while we still had an AC running or the microwave.

It turns out that most of the tenants here at the Chinook RV Resort are long-term residents that stay for the entire summer fishing season or longer, and most have travel trailers or 5th wheels that are fine on 30 amp power.  All the other big rigs (Motorhomes) here are parked at the limited number of 50 amp spaces.  Of course, I won’t know for sure until I get to the next campground and I plug into 30 amp again, but I’m going to assume for now that my Surge-Guard was simply doing it’s job, and the park’s 30 amp wiring here needs an upgrade.  All the pedestals and boxes here are pretty old and deteriorated.  The first one I plugged into almost fell over, the wooden pole was so rotten.

With the power problem solved for now, Stilla put some more clothes in the washer/dryer combo while I got tips from the camp host and others on local sites to see.  We left at 2 PM with a list of things to go see and do today, so follow along and enjoy the pics.

Our first tip was the Klamath River Overlook on Requa Road which is a loop that climbs the mountain, (hill), that overlooks the mouth of the Klamath River at 600 feet.  It was only 1/2 mile from our campground.  Here are the views.

We still didn’t see any whales 🙁

Our next tip, which is a place we had passed on the way into town the day before – and knew of already, was the Trees of Mystery and Sky Trail (Gondola) Ride.  This was one cool place that has a lot of history.  It was founded in the early ’30s right off Hwy 101 and is only 3.5 miles North of our campground.  Many of the trees here have been seen in Ripleys Believe  It or Not.  I’m sure this is one of the most visited and photographed sites in Northern California.

Here’s a link to their website if you would like more information. http://www.treesofmystery.net  Enjoy the pics… although, as usual – the pictures don’t do the place justice.

The entrance fee was $15 per person.  Now this was definitely high on my personal value-meter.  Well worth it!

We passed some folks on one of the trails that were fascinated with something on the ground and were taking pictures… it turns out this is a rarely seen banana slug that was crossing the trail.  So, I followed suit and took a picture also.  So enjoy.

Once again, I don’t know how Stilla does it, but she found some more Germans.  There was a film crew from Germany climbing one of the trees.  They were doing a documentary on the Redwoods.  We watched them for a while, at one point they even put a camera drone up in the air to film the climbers.

We continued on with our tour after the climbers were out of sight.

A highlight of this Place of Wonder is the Sky Trail (Gondola).  It was included in the entrance fee.  We had a six-passenger gondola all to ourselves.  It takes 8 – 10 minutes to make the 1570 ft trip up the mountain.

Here is the entrance at the bottom.

 

Going up…

 

and up…

Our obligatory selfie:

Here we are at the top.

Here you can see the Pacific Ocean in the background.

After our fantastic trip above the trees, we drove back to the Coach to get little Coach so we could go through a tree.  Unfortunately, we had left him in the Coach because we assumed the Trees of Mystery park wouldn’t be dog-friendly – the opposite was true, they allow dogs on leashes  everywhere in the park, even the gondolas!  But it was too late for little Coach to make his mark on any of the greater than 2,000 year old trees.  So anyway, we picked him up and continued 1.5 miles the other direction (South) from our RV site to the next tip we got from folks at the campground – The Tour-Thru Tree!

I had to pull the mirrors in, but we fit.  Here’s a picture I took in the mirror after we passed through and I pushed the drivers-side mirror back out.

When I said we fit – it was with one caveat.. I had to loosen one of the bicycles on the rack because the tire was starting to rub on one side.  But hey, we fit 🙂

That was worth the $5 entrance fee.  The tree is approximately 785 years old and the opening is 7’4″ (2.23 m) wide and 9’6″ (2.90 m) high.

The next tip we got from the camp host was to take the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway which is a road that parallels Hwy 101 and goes through some more of the fantastically huge Coastal Redwoods.

But first we had to cross the Klamath River bridge.

This is the Klamath River.

After driving through some more of the scenic forest along the Newton B. Drury Parkway  (which used to be part of the original Redwood Highway) to the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park we arrived at Elk Prairie and the Ranger Station.  It closed at 5 PM and it was now 5:30, so we just toured the outside of the building, took pictures of Elk in and around the meadow there, and took a short walk in the woods to close out our evening.

This picture of the map on the ranger station wall shows our location.  Sorry about the quality, but as always, if you click on any of the pictures you get an enlarged view.

We took the long way back along a rarely used coastal road.

For those interested in WWII trivia; we came upon a “farmhouse” that was really a radar station in disguise.  It has been preserved here on the coast just south of the town of Klamath.  The placard below provides some interesting information.

Here’s the roof of one of the disguised radar stations from WWII.

We finally got back to our campground just after dusk.  Shore power was still working fine and we even have satellite TV through the rooftop dish at our latest spot.  I worked on this blog post while we watched some TV.  We’ll head on a little farther South tomorrow (Monday) before we start moving back East towards Colorado… at least that’s the plan for now 🙂