Day 1 -

Susan gave me a great gift for the trip....its a neat book with blank pages so you can record your adventures.  I'll be doing the recording on this blog but the cover still works for the first image of the blog!

The first part of the journey was familiar to me and those of you one the Oregon South coast.  South on Highway 101 has many beautiful ocean views, often from bluffs.  If you are watching the scenery too much you can drive off...I avoided that problem.   I captured most of those scenes on the dashcam video but its already 9:45PM and downloading, editing and then uploading those videos is more than I can handle tonight.  Here's a stop I made on the coast down almost at sea level.

And here are a couple of still shots I pulled from the dashcam.

Elmer (you need to read my old blogs to learn where I picked up Elmer) and I stopped for a light lunch at a roadside pullout.  There was a family using the picnic table to we used the Jeep.

We spent some time going through the Redwood National and State Park in norther California.   There are no drive through redwoods here but there are some big, big trees!  Just a couple places we stopped.

After the redwoods the landscape changed into more of a hill/mountain pasture land for awhile.  I took these photos and then drove off, forgetting that Elmer was on the side mirror.  I saw him fly off and was fortunate that no one else was on the road and I was able to retrieve him...poor Elmer.

I had planned my route to go through scenic countryside rather than major highways.  In doing so I routed along Bald Hills Road in Humbolt Count which runs through the Yurok Reservation.  I came across a Reservation is Closed sign on the road but rather than backtrack 50 miles or so I continued onward.  I even bought some gas near Weitchpec but since it was self serve I didn't raise too many eyebrows.  I thought I was in the middle of wilderness and suddenly came upon the Yurok Veterans Cemetery.

I made it off the reservation and headed for Redding CA.  The lake on the right of the next picture is only a tiny part of the Whiskytown Recreational area just outside of Redding.  I could have spent a few hours wandering around the edges of the lake but it was getting late (and I was tired).

Tomorrow is less driving time to get to Carson NV so I can spend a bit more time sightseeing.  Here's the google maps link:   https://goo.gl/maps/XkgbHQTxeHwNsQZG6