Saturday 8/19/17
If you looked out
at an angle from my motel room window, you could see the bay. It was looking pretty foggy, so I didn’t go
out for sunrise. When I did venture out, I found something unexpected. My car was coated in a heavy dusting of gray ash.
The motel didn’t
do breakfast, so once again it was off to a conveniently placed Safeway for a
few things. I grabbed a coffee to go and
headed back to the park. I could have
sworn I heard sea lions in the fog. It
turns out I wasn’t just hearing things.
The noise was coming from one of the islands.
It was a good
thing I walked. The police had barricaded
the park entrances. After a few minutes
of exploring I found out why. There was
a big disc(aka Frisbee) golf tournament scheduled. I realize disc golf is a thing, but never
really thought about tournaments. This is their fourth annual B-level tournament. A sort of minor league perhaps? Either way it's officially sanctioned by the Professional Disc Golf Association.
There were people
warming up, stretching and discussing the course. The players all seemed to have either a
backpack full of discs or a bag on rollers full of them. I would have loved to sit down with one of
them for ten minutes to find out a few things, but they seemed pretty focused. I even thought about sticking around for the
start of the tournament. In the end, I
took my coffee and moved on.
Passing through
the town of Klamath two things caught my attention. The first was an attraction where you could
drive through a tree. I’ve done that in
Sequoia National Park. There was an
entrance fee. I wasn’t that jazzed about
driving through a tree. How this made it so high on someone's to do list is a mystery to me.
There seemed to
be a great deal of activity in the area as well. It turned out to be the Yukon Tribe's Salmon Festival. It seemed to be just getting started, so I
kept driving south.
A few miles north
of Oreck, I found Davison Road, my turn off.
My hiking guidebook had multiple trails listed from the end of the
road. What it didn’t mention was the
condition of the road. The first six
miles is all gravel and dust. How much
dust? The bottom three feet of the
plants was coated in a graying brown color.
The road went from steep to flat to tight corners quickly. I’ll give the other drivers credit where it’s due. Of all the cars I met coming the other way,
only one was going too fast. I saw him
before he saw me.
The other
feature of the road were the large potholes, some filled with water so you had
no idea what you were driving into. And
did I mention the stream crossing? We
won’t be telling the rental company about that one.
There’s a parking
lot at the end of the road which was only a quarter full when I arrived. By the time I left they were parking up the
side of the road and making it even tighter going,
The first trail is
a popular one and a six mile round trip through the aptly named Fern
Canyon. There are plenty of bridges of
wooden boards for the numerous stream crossings. The trouble begins deeper in the canyon where
some very large trees have fallen down.
Some pressed on and found ways to scramble over them. Most people turned back.
Also aptly named
is the Gold Bluffs Trail. It runs three
miles along the edge of the beach to another rocky outcrop of rocks out in the
surf. At this point in the day you
couldn’t exactly see the bluffs and it seemed silly to hike down three miles on
a fog shrouded beach.
These are the Gold Bluffs from few hours later in the day...
Instead, I chose a
trail up into the forest. Four and a
half miles up the trail is a visitors center.
I had no intention of hiking nine miles round trip, Instead, I just walked to the next trail
juncture 1.8 miles out. It was all up
and down and just felt like the right distanced. I asked a hiker from Montana what was up the
trail, She paused, then said
“trees.” She wasn’t lying.
Back at the car I
found a busy parking lot. Eventually I
worked my way out, passed the potholes and watched the line of divers
contemplate the stream crossing. I was impressed on the way out. Drivers were giving way to each other on the
bottlenecks in the road. Still, I was
glad to be out and on paved roads again.
Two miles south
and I was checking into the Palm Motel and Café in Orick. I chose it for its location. I met the owner checking in and he couldn’t
have been any mellower. The room was
average sized and well kept. Though the door stuck and rattled the walls every time I tried to open or close it. The only
issue is the traffic noise on Hwy 101.
As you might have
guessed, the café sits right next door.
The service was a little slow, but the food and the pie were delicious. Here's the Yelp review of the Palm Cafe.
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