Day #25—Willits to Eureka, CA--Thursday June 16, 2011

I ran Tiger down to Ukiah to board at the vet’s, shopped for some groceries, and then spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon getting us ready for our Coast and Olympic Peninsula jaunt. I washed the car again—it was dirty from the dirt roads in the CG, but mostly just covered with yellow pine pollen, and the inside of the windows were smeared with the plastic gas bubbles that are released with heat from the dash. Note: The Prius has 4200 miles on it so far for this trip. 

After attending to the car, I aired out and cleaned the tarps and tents, reorganized the food, and repacked the camping gear while Sarah computed her payroll accounts. She ran into all sorts of hair-pulling, stressful problems with her computer and Quick Books, the program she uses, but after several calls to Tech Services and also to her clients, she got the job done. 

We will not need our tents, because along the cold, foggy coast we decided to rent yurts (round platform tents with heat and other amenities). However, when we called to reserve, we found that there were no yurts but one available for the entire season. We will be in the available one the night after next in South Beach SP in Oregon. Tomorrow night we will be in a cabin in Umpqua Lighthouse SP in OR, and, with the exception of one night on the way back in a motel, we will be in KOA cabins, the least expensive option we could find. 

We left Willits about 4:30 after Sarah dropped off the last couple of payrolls and we’d gassed up at $3.95 a gal. Good thing we did as farther north it was $4.19 and over. 

Stopped for Hamburgers at The Chief, in Laytonville, CA, so called because it has a large statue of an Indian Chief carved entirely with an ax in 1939. I had a tuna melt and Sarah had a BBQ sandwich. A guy pulled in on a beautiful old Indian motorcycle in prime condition . . . sadly not so the rider.

Got to our KOA between Eureka and Arcata a little before 7PM. I remember the time because they were having an ice cream social that ended at 7—all the ice cream and toppings one wanted for $2. We had a couple of minutes to take advantage of this offer, but decided not. 

KOA offices and store

This is the same KOA that Jessica and I stayed at when we were cycling the coast in 2000. Sarah and I are in a “rustic” cabin, but Jess and I were in tents on a narrow strip of grass behind the store. The Tandem tourists we’d met camped here also. We sneaked into the hot tub in our underwear late that night when all were abed. The place where the hot tub was is now a picnic arbor and they now have a heated pool and Jacuzzi. Camping modern day style.

Sarah soaking up the day's last rays on the porch of our KOA cabin

This is what it looked like behind the offices above when Jess and I camped here 11 years ago on our West Coast bicycle ride . . . 'cept there were only two tents, ours and a tandem couple's

We arranged our bedding, deciding that we’d do every other night on the single/double beds in these cabins. Sarah drew the single and decided she would use her single aero bed mattress which she’d brought. Didn’t work. Then she decided she’d put both mattresses on the top bunk and sleep there. Too high. Hauled the mattresses off the top bunk and put both on the bottom bunk. Too low. Hauled one mattress off the bottom bunk and put it back on the top bunk. Now the bottom bunk was back to its original one mattress and Goldilocks found it “just right” and slept on the bottom bunk. Fortunately, none of the three bears returned to the cabin that night. 

The door to the cabin was hugely squeaky, so prohibited sneaking quietly in and out to the washroom the several times in the night we needed to. Maybe a can of WD-40 is in order.