McGuire Bunch's Meander
(August 2, 2007)
1
It's late Thursday afternoon, and it's been a hot day. We're finally on our way. Kirk, Deanna, Megan and Mason ahead of us at the Idaho Maryland - Brunswick intersection. We'll meet up with Jim and Kathy's family tomorrow afternoon at Arcadia. On the way, We encounter lots of road work along the way. It's so hot, one cannot help but wonder how the flag men and women tolerate the heat all day long. While waiting for the traffic to move it gets a
little boring, so I began to look around for something interesting. There he was....In broad daylight, the man-in-the-moon was smiling down at us in our cool RV, reminding us of how lucky we were to be on our way to some marvelous new adventure. What a beautiful day!
The Butte's and a few high clouds were visible in the distance.
Before long we're passing Clear Lake.
Just up the road (at Lucerne) we stop at a road-block where the flag man tells us that the road ahead is blocked because of an accident involving five cars. He says it will be about four hours before we can continue...so we turn into this rest area for the night. Evidently this is where the ferry docks at the Lake.
Across the road is a pizza place, so Kirk ordered one, and I made a big salad for dinner. We ate at one of the tables out on this dock. Very pleasant. As it turned dark, Mason brought a bright lantern out, but decided to put it at a distance when he saw all the creepy critters it attracted. Sometime during the night we could hear vehicles leaving the rest area so we figured the road must have opened. In the morning we were told that the cause of the accident was a drunk woman who had been fighting with her boyfriend. Her car caused a head on collision that killed a lady who worked on the ferry, and a young child. Very sad. A few seconds of stupidity can cause so much grief.
A solitary loon (?) enjoying the quiet morning water by the dock.
As we're pulling out, I quickly took this photo of the ducks along the shore.
As you can see, we're heading towards the Redwoods.
First, a short stop at Garberville to meet Deena to give her the tent she forgot. She was camping at the huge Reggae Rising event. "Organizers with People Productions’ Reggae Rising concert said this year’s successful turnout is something they hope to repeat. More than 12,000 reggae fans and volunteers are currently gathered near Piercy in Southern Humboldt for the 24th year in a row. This year the name has changed, but a lot of the same faces are running the show. More than 3,000 volunteers and staff have gathered from all over the world to put untold hours of work toward making this year’s festival a success." We saw the crowds of people and signs warning vehicles to watch for pedestrians. That said, we were on our way again.
Welcome to beautiful Redwood Park...
Megan unsuccessfully tries to add her name with the others carved in this old tree trunk.
I saw someone else doing this, so I laid down and look up to capture what it looks like from the bottom to the top.
Kirk and kids have some fun on this one.
Hurry up Grammy! This is hard to handle.
We missed the Founder's Tree sign and kept going until we came to this. Will we clear? Not far up the road we turned around and on the way back noticed a road that went over the hill to the side of this tunnel. We drove over it and on the other side this Tour bus was stranded, because it was to high to clear the tunnel. The driver had done some mechanical things to lower it, but it still wouldn't clear. Kirk told the driver about the road we'd just come back on, and thought he could use it too. All he had to do was back up...go over, and turn around on the other side...Then come back over the detour. It worked, because we saw it later near the Founder's Tree that we eventually found too.
This was a scene on the other side of the tunnel before we turned around.
Mason had fun looking for a lucky clover leaf.
Okay! Here's the Founder's Tree.
Here's another one that had a hollow (house) in it. It had a little slit beside the opening that Mason thought the squirrels could use. I'm demonstrating that it would make a good the mail box.
Boo!....... Is that Bigfoot sneaking up behind you?
Kirks reading about the different trees.
The remnant of roots on this fallen giant makes an artistic statement of its own.
Okay Mason...I guess we'd better get on the road again.
