EMERGING FROM THE DARKNESS.
Day 68 – We got up by the alarm this morning, reminiscent of the days of needing to get up at a certain time with a blaring alarm. Ick, 6 a.m., dark out. We needed to drive in to Fortuna early because of the time difference between here & NY; we had to receive a cell/internet signal to check the temperature in the house & contact the energy company to either cancel or confirm this afternoon’s appointment & unlock the door to let the technician in at home.
Last night was crazy. As soon as we got home from picking up the inverter in Eureka, Rob started working on the installation. Pitch black outside, we needed all the lights on in the RV & flashlights aimed since he was on the floor for hours, working in a small, dark, cramped space on the floor in the hallway. He had to remove two large drawers located below the refrigerator & the pantry in order to access the space where the current inverter was, remove it, insert the new inverter, put together connections, etc. There were tools & tool boxes, wires & connectors, the two drawers full of kitchen supplies, and empty boxes & paper sacks covering the floor. Enter four bored cats. Playtime! I had to laugh as they climbed all over Rob who was working with half his body in the place where one of the drawers had been. They were picking at EVERYTHING. At one point he made a loud noise as he pounded something together trying to make it fit. All four cats simultaneously jumped into the air, startled, then went back to playing & just plain getting in the way. Rob was very patient, though, LOL. Never a dull moment!
Rob found he needed a part. It was 6:35 p.m. cold & raining hard. We had no phone connection to check what was still open, so he drove all the way back to Fortuna. We assumed the ACE Hardware store closed at 9 p.m. He arrived at 7:05 and they were closed. Other hardware stores were closed, also. He drove back to the RV empty-handed. He wanted to get the job finished last night because without an inverter, you can run your batteries down quickly when things aren’t working properly. He improvised & was able to continue the project without the new part. After hours of work, he found that the battery cables did not fit into the holes in the new inverter due to the difference between the former & new inverters. We gave up for the night.
We were on the road a little after 7 a.m. this morning; it was just getting light. Thick fog, 40 degrees, it had finally stopped raining. At the parking lot in Fortuna where we could get a phone signal, Rob checked the status of the furnace at home. Not holding the temperature. He confirmed our afternoon appointment. We checked the weather forecast & drove into town to buy supplies for the inverter installation. Rob had decided he could try hooking narrower cables to the ends of the battery cables so they’d fit into the new inverter. Mr. Fix-It, we call him! We purchased those narrower battery cables. The weather forecast showed no rain today and tomorrow, cloudy the next day, then rain coming back for 5 days straight. Yeah, we’ve heard that before.
We arrived back at the RV at 9 a.m., foggy in places, sunny in others, 45 degrees. The Van Duzen River was flowing high & rapidly by, due to all of this rain. We drove quickly to the larger River campsites beyond ours to get another look before deciding how long to stay here & whether we wanted to move to one of those sites. Gotta pay for a few more nights. We like where we are, nestled in the redwoods, and it sure is nice to have electricity. We are spoiled. We’ll wait & see how things go.
Rob jumped back in working on the inverter problem. We have a narrow window of decent weather in which to do our sight-seeing in this area. Hopefully we can do some of it today after a successful completion of the $800 inverter replacement project. And hopefully it can be determined what’s wrong with the furnace at home so we can make the decision whether to get a new one installed or keep spending money on the old one. Life’s little trials & tribulations.
Two and a half hours later, with Rob’s improvisations, the inverter was working. We’d give it some time & do some tests later. We drove to Fortuna to check on the situation at home. Two technicians visited this time, they found a blockage in the oil supply line & cleaned it out. For now anyway, the temperature is back up; we’ll see if it stays there this time. Can both problems finally be solved?
We decided to have lunch in Fortuna & stopped at a Mexican restaurant, La Costa. Very good, authenic Mexican food. I had a combo plate; Rob had huevos rancheros. We don’t usually eat that much during the day. We went north to below Eureka, stopping at the Humboldt Botanical Garden, hoping to walk some of this lunch off. It was a little after 1 p.m., they closed at 2:00, so rather than pay the entrance fee for less than an hour’s visit, we chose to go elsewhere. The Gardens looked nice, though; hope we can go back tomorrow.
Instead we went south to the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. There were two units within: the Salmon Creek Unit & the Hookton Slough Unit. At the Salmon Creek Unit we drove along the marshy area which ran between Humboldt Bay & Highway 101, not seeing walkable trails until we reached the Richard Guadagno Visitor Center.
We found out from a tribute on the wall at the Visitor Center that Richard J. Guadagno was a young man in his 30’s who worked hard to preserve the wetlands around Humboldt Bay and he was a Project Manager at the NWR. He was born in New Jersey, he was a Biologist, graduating from Rutgers University, and he’d worked 17 years in wildlife refuges in NJ, DE & OR before coming to Eureka, CA. He was also one of the heroic passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, the highjacked plane which crashed in PA on September 11, 2001. He’d been returning from visiting his family at his grandmother’s 100th birthday party. A scholarship has been created in his honor.
We spoke with a man who worked there & he recommended other places for us to go to get pictures & for bird watching, and also suggested kayaking at their other Unit. We picked up, yet again, more pamphlets & brochures. We drove to the Hookton Slough Unit to check out the boat dock. Rob got pictures of a beautiful Western Grebe there. But as far as kayaking, the boat launch was the kind you step off of, down into your boat from a dock, rather than the kind where you launch from land & push yourself into the water. I personally feel much more comfortable pushing off from land to launch a kayak.
Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Loleta, CA
Western Grebe, Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Loleta, CA
Western Grebe, Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Loleta, CA
We drove to an area recommended by the man at the Visitor’s Center, indeed quite beautiful, the Eel River Wildlife Area. This was southwest of the Wildlife Refuge, on the Ocean, with views looking back to the mouth of Humboldt Bay & south through a row of large Cypress trees lined up on the bluff overlooking Eel River. We stopped at several scenic bluffs to get pictures, discovering a very experienced & talented woman paragliding above. We watched her land, take off, and float above the Ocean. Beautiful day, gorgeous scenery. Sigh.
Taking backcountry roads towards the town of Loleta, we went around an Indian reservation near Table Bluff, around sand dunes & lichen-draped beach pine forests, up into hills with prairies, lots of cows & horses, and nice homes & ranches.
We returned eventually to the RV, still full from lunch, & skipped dinner entirely. The cats wanted to be fed extra, though, after spending the afternoon on the dashboard vying for the bits of sun peaking through the trees. What a beautiful area this is!