Day 69 - Brookings, OR to Klamath, CA

Mike Mladenoff
Jun 10, 2016
2 min read

Because gas was undoubtedly cheaper in Oregon, we fueled up before crossing the state line.

Before headed toward Crescent City, we took a small detour to the east and visited the forest where the speeder bike scene from Return of the Jedi was filmed.

It was a beautiful area with lots of big trees, but the road proved too curvy for Kristen's liking. So I stopped and we got out to looked around for a few minutes before I performed a majestic three point turn in the middle of the highway and headed back toward the coast.

We passed through Crescent City to get to Point Saint George. The main reason for this stop was to look at St. George's Reef Lighthouse. The reason I say "look" is that you cannot actually visit this lighthouse any longer. In the past, the Coast Guard conducted the 6-mile flight via helicopter, but at some point the helipad was deemed too small, so all flights and tours abruptly ended.

The first picture below is from a random internet source that obviously shows the lighthouse much better than we could see through the light fog (second picture below)

We spent some time beach combing and looking through the tide pools. Apparently, this area is also famous for the highly sought after burl wood. We didn't look very hard, but there were others that did come away with some good finds after sifting through the masses of drift wood.

We stopped at the Redwood National and State Parks Visitor Center in Crescent City and the kids got their passports stamped, loaded up on maps and a couple of books for the road.

In between the National and State Parks was the Trees of Mystery.

We went on the tour which winds you through a rain forest like area with huge redwood trees

After about 20 minutes walking through the trees, we ended up at the gondola ride that takes you up several hundred feet through the massive trees.

The ride makes several pauses on the way up. Here, we stopped right next to a gondola that was headed down. We said hello and snapped a picture.

At the top, there is a tiered wooden observation deck. Being that is was cloudy, there was not much to observe, but we did take some pictures of us and then headed back down.

Because of weight limits, we rode in two separate gondolas and it was great fun for all.

A short drive down Highway 1 and we found our campground along the Klamath River.

Dinner was cooking on the Volcano stove while we enjoyed the setting.

We finished dinner and Rachel finally got to try out some of her new fishing gear that we purchased in Montana. The results however were still the same. No fish.