Archive for August, 2008

Hwy 1 and Salt Point State Park

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

We took off just before noon and headed away from Bear River and over to Hwy 1 and the coast.  Windy roads are fun and all, but not for five hours!  Well… unless you’re on a motorcycle.  We stayed in Salt Point State Park at the Woodside Campground, which was super clean and really nice with flush toilet facilities and fairly spread out campsites.  With just under a mile hike to the beach, we got a bit of the ocean fog, but it was still a nice place to hang out. 

This whole stretch of Hwy 1 is very clean and would be awesome for a motorcycle trip, you can cut over to it from Hwy 101 in Petaluma.

Bear River

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

What a great week of camping so far!  This is the “old cabin” that we all used as a common eating place and food storage.  We spent the entire trip sleeping in the tent trailer with Mike and Mary (that mattress seems to be much more comfortable than my Thermarest as of late).

The rest of the time was hiking, a teeny bit of fishing, horseshoes, swimming, and beer.  With a little bit of reading thrown in for good measure.  This has got to be one of the more relaxing vacations i’ve been on in a long time.  All I had to worry about was waking up, and showing up for meals/beer.  Well, and going to the bathroom.

In order to get to this place, most people require 4×4 trucks/vehicles because of the need to cross the river a couple times and some steep rocky hills and fire roads.  You really feel isolated out there and its so quiet. 

I should have brought my guns!

The Week of Camping

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

Went up to Bear River camping for most of the week but first we stopped in Ferndale to walk around and sightsee, and have a beer.  Ferndale has a lot of Victorian style homes and a nice little downtown strip with shops and restaurants.  Its about 45 minutes to trek in to Bear River from here, lot of hills.

These bikes were all lined up in front of the Gingerbread Mansion, which I believe is famous for something, I just don’t know what that something is.  I think the drive up to Ferndale took us about 6 hours – but since Mike drove everyone, all I had to do was sit, sleep, drool a little, and change music on the Zune every once in a while.