Friends and Steak Night at Eureka Elks Lodge

After exchanging a few emails last night, we learned that Don and Sharon would be arriving at the Eureka Elks today and made plans for the four of us to attend the Elks steak dinner on Friday night.  Prior to their arrival we made a trip into town to pick up our mail.  Eureka is just a large enough city that it has several post offices, and we ended up going to two of them before we picked up our mail.  After another short grocery shopping trip and picking up lottery tickets, we headed back to the RV.

Once Don and Sharon arrived, we visited briefly before they continued getting set up for their stay.  We met again later to walk over to the Elks for our barbecue your own steak night.  Here’s a photo of Don and Ken (both in red shirts) watching over the steaks on the grill.  They both look pretty intent on doing a good job.

Sharon came out to check on the status of the steaks. 

All was going well at the grill, so Sharon and I prepared our salads and waited for dinner delivery.  I thought that the steaks were New York, but they may have been some other cut.  Regardless, they were so tender you didn’t really need a knife to cut them.  After dinner we returned to our RV’s with plans to get together for happy hour tomorrow and to do something for dinner.

This blog is bit short tonight as I’ve got my nose stuck back in the Kindle reading another book by Michael Prescott called Mortal Faults.

 

I won’t get it finished tonight, but this has quickly become a new favorite author of mine.

Eureka, Anniversary, Redwoods, and Elk

Happy anniversary to us today…37 years!  We started our day by finding an ATM in Eureka and since it was still a little early for our planned lunch, we drove around Eureka.  These first three photos were taken along the east side of Humboldt Bay.

We drove over a long bridge to the west side of the bay to have a look around.

The west side of the bay was formerly a Navy base but is now facilities for the Coast Guard.

The change in weather could be seen in the wave activity along the Pacific Ocean.

We thought the restaurant we planned to go to for lunch would be in the main area of Eureka, but it turned out to be south of our exit for the Elks lodge so it was a long drive north and then back south for lunch.  Although it seemed to be in a very out of the way location, the parking lot was full at Gills by the Bay,  and we had a very  good lunch.  Ken had the fish and chips and a cup of seafood chowder while I had the Sandy Beach Sandwich which was bay shrimp, crisp bacon, green onions & cheddar cheese on grilled sourdough bread.

After lunch, we drove north on Hwy 101 to the visitor center for the Redwoods National Park.

Ken picked up some pamphlets and talked to the ranger at the desk for a while, and then we watched a short movie about the redwoods.

From there we continued driving north (and then back south) to see the redwoods and elk (with a deer thrown into the mix) in the area.

And that’s “the end” for today!

Lost Beach Loop Drive

Since the weather was due to take a turn for the worse on Thursday, we decided to take the Lost Beach Loop drive today.  We started the drive on the north part of the loop at the Fernbridge/Ferndale exit south of Eureka.  We crossed a bridge over the Eel River.

 

We drove through the town of Ferndale which has a lot of Victorian style buildings in town.  We stopped at the post office to send some things off in the mail and continued through town.  If time and weather allow, we may take some time to go back there and explore a little bit more.

The entire loop drive is around 100 miles long, but it is very scenic.  The road is very narrow and there are several places where it is down to one lane due to slides.  There is a section of road that follows the Pacific Ocean and there are several large farms along the route.

I’m not sure what they are, but we saw these unusual flowers in front of one of the farms along our route.

This cow seems to have just given birth to the calf lying at her feet.

We crossed this bridge on the final portion of our loop before entering the Humboldt Redwoods area.

It’s really amazing driving on the road through these large redwoods that are hundreds of years old.

I’m pretty sure this gas station is out of business…if not, it should be.

Our pickup wanted it’s photo taken in front of one of the large redwoods, so we stopped briefly to do that.

This wood carving of an ear of corn caught my eye.

There might be another RV in our future, but it’s definitely not this one.

We continued our drive on into Eureka to pick up some things at the Costco then returned to the RV for the evening.

From Vineyards to Redwoods

We were on the road around 9:00am this morning and once again headed north on Hwy 101.

The first part of our drive took us through numerous vineyards on either side of the highway.

Last night Ken started researching for a diesel stop along our route and we finally decided to stop at the Safeway grocery store in Willits.  With a large enough purchase of groceries, we would get a $.10 a gallon discount rather than the usual $.03 off per gallon.  In addition to the groceries, we picked up sandwiches at their deli for our lunch at a rest area another 20 miles up the road.

After our lunch stop at the rest area, we continued north through the Humboldt State Redwoods area.

Most of the Hwy 101 is narrow and twisting up and down hills but is very scenic.

We arrived at the Eureka Elks lodge before 3pm and that will be our home for the next 4 nights.

Santa Clara, CA to Santa Rosa, CA

The Santa Clara Elks lodge office was scheduled to be open at 9:00am this morning, so we planned our departure to fit with that as we had keys to the dump station and water to turn in to the office so that we could get our deposit back.  We dumped the holding tanks, hooked up the pickup, turned in the keys, and headed north on Hwy 101.

We noticed this unusual looking hangar at an airport as we drove by.

As we were getting nearer to the Golden Gate Bridge, I noticed these flags on the lampposts.  Obviously, it must be the 75th anniversary of the bridge.

My photos today aren’t the greatest, but here’s our approach to the bridge.  As opposed to our last trip over the bridge a few years ago when everything was fogged over, there were some beautiful views today.  Unfortunately, looking through my side window produced a bad reflection on any photos taken from that angle.

In this photo, we’re about halfway across the bridge.

Continuing our journey north to Santa Rosa, Ken spotted this Citoen in the right lane, so I took a couple of photos of it.

We pulled into the Sonoma County Fairgrounds RV Park around 12:30pm and got set up.  We had originally planned to be here for at least 2 nights to do a little bit of research on my grandfather who was from this area.  However, the camp host got confused in signing us in and he only charged us for one night instead of two.  He came by a few minutes later to let us know what had happened.  After the long day yesterday going over Ken’s family history with his cousins, I wasn’t too interested in doing any more research and we were both getting tired of the big city atmosphere, so we will continue on north tomorrow.

A Day In Genealogy Land…Catching Up With the Gear Family

Okay…I’m the first to admit that I’m not into genealogy as much as Ken is…but for better or worse, I’ve agreed to help him as much as I can.  We’re in Santa Clara, CA where Ken has been in touch with a cousin he has not met before but who has an old family bible from the early 1800’s.  That he had to see, so plans were made to visit him.  Another cousin Donna from Vancouver, WA made plans to meet up with us also.  We met her for the first time last spring on our way north.

Here are the three cousins:  Dave, Ken, and Donna

From left to right:  Ken, Dave and Donna.

Ken on the left is looking over Dave as he opens some pages in the old family bible.

Ken had a truly amazing day being able to actually see the close to 200 year old family bible that was actually written in by his ancestors.

Before we headed back to the RV, Dave’s wife Theresa returned home and we got a photo of the two of them together.  We left wishing we could have had a little more time with Theresa also.

As we said our goodbyes and got ready to leave, we got some last photos of the cousins:  Dave, Donna, and Ken.

It was a long day for me, but I think Ken had a very enjoyable day meeting up with the cousins and getting caught up on their genealogy.