Day 73 – Woke up to heavy fog, not raining though, and 54 degrees. After yesterday’s busy time when people arrived to camp here, no one else came in. There’s a decent amount of noise from the highway & the gas station near us on the 101, but this campground works well for a two-night stopover.
We’d decided there were two areas we wanted to camp next, one was south on Highway 101 to some nearby lakes, and the other was along the Pacific Coast Highway, Route 1. The end result depended on the campground situation. We’d just do the coastal route if there were no good camping places at the lakes. We made egg salad, packed a lunch, and left the RV at 9:45 a.m., 57 degrees, partly sunny, the fog had lifted here.
The drive south on the 101 to the lakes was interesting. Initially we were driving on curvy roads through the redwoods, entering & leaving several state parks & state recreation areas. A few of these were on our list of 49 Redwood State Parks, so we stopped when we could, looked at their campgrounds (which were either empty or closed for the season), and took pictures of their signs.
We drove east on a dirt road, trying to reach the BLM Eel River Campground to check to see if it would work for us. Since we couldn’t even get the car through some parts because the road was muddy, slippery, steep, & winding, we turned around & went back to Highway 101. There was another way to get to this campground, and that road is probably better, so we may try it again in a few days on that road, Route 162. It was beautiful there; Rob took a picture.
View West from Laytonville-Dos Rios Rd, Laytonville, CA
The terrain and surroundings changed somewhat with less evergreen trees & more brush & oak trees. We saw the beginnings of wine country with grape plants (in fall color or brownish yellow, and no, they weren’t just dead plants). There were lots of hills, but it was more ranch country than redwood forests. Still plenty of rivers and streams, their waters high & rushing by.
We passed a large area where the hills were being seeded & road work was being done due to recent fires and slides. I looked it up on the internet – in the Ukiah area huge fires burned out of control in July & August of this year. Very sad to see all the burned hills & trees.
We had two places left to see for campground evaluations: the Lake Mendocino area and the Clear Lake area. On the map, Clear Lake looks like it’s very large with lots of independent campgrounds & Clear Lake State Park. This time of year, it shouldn’t be busy at all, but it seemed like this would be the more visited Lake between the two. Lake Mendocino was a much smaller lake & the three campgrounds there were Army Corps of Engineers (COE) facilities. We stayed at an COE campground in Arkansas on Trip #1 earlier in the year, and it was a wonderful Park. We were interested in seeing another one to see if this was consistently the case.
We arrived at Lake Mendocino first. A beautiful lake, enveloped in fog, fall colors in many of the trees, we were hooked & decided to look further. Two of the three campgrounds were closed for the season. The third one, Ky-en Campground, had 21 campsites in two small loops open, the rest of the campground was closed. We drove through & discovered this one was not first come, first served. There was no ranger or campground host on duty. Written instructions were to pick a site that was empty & make sure there was not a “reserved” sign on it. Then call or go online to reserve the site you want. Two sites were occupied, one other had a reserved sign on it. A very nice campground, overlooking Lake Mendocino (as the fog lifted), a Day Use Area with a boat launch, hiking trails, no hook-ups, dump station not open. Our problem was not a bad one – which campsite to choose; we had trouble narrowing it down, and several fit our RV & car nicely. We decided on site #13 on the upper loop, several trees around it but open enough to get plenty of light, private and on a hill overlooking the campground & the Lake below. When we called in to reserve that site, we were happy to find it was available & not reserved by anyone else during the next two weeks. YAAA! Rob took a couple of pictures from the Day Use Area before we left. We decided there was no use going further to Clear Lake; we’d found our next place to explore.
It looks like we’ll have internet & phone connections from Lake Mendocino FINALLY. One more night without them. We hadn’t been able to post the blog for two weeks. We took notes & did what we could to ready the pictures, but we hadn’t been able to upload the pics and publish. Hadn’t been able to respond to e-mail or call people on the phone. While that’s nice for peace & quiet, it does come in handy to at least be able to use the devices when we want to………
We drove back to the RV & promptly did a couple of loads of laundry. Will wash our hair & use all the hook-ups we want for one more night before dumping tanks completely tomorrow & going back to no electricity & dump station again. There is water available at spigots in the new campground, thank goodness. The girls won’t like the drive tomorrow but we’re sure they’ll really like the new campsite we have picked out for them.