Jedediah Smith State Park, California

On the way down from Bullard's Beach to Jed Smith we picked up our first (and only to date) hitch hiker. Cammie was a woman in her early fifties. Travelling light. She wanted a ride to Brookings Oregon that day. Since we were going that far and further, we offered her a ride. She hitch hikes up the coast in early summer, then goes down to the Mendocino Coast in the fall, finally wintering around Monterrey. She sleeps in churches along the way, telling us she feels rich, though she has very, very little. She used to travel with a guitar. "They" stole it. Then a fiddle. They stole it. Same thing with a camera. Cammie told us she'd like to live up around Yachats Oregon, but there are a lot of people around there that grow pot in the forest. They seem to have a way of showing up at your camp unannounced. She finds the tall forest on the Smith River where we're headed to be spooky. We drop her off in the rain on the south end of Brookings near the church where she'll sleep for the night. Jed Smith marks the start of the truly big trees. In the campground we find the largest redwood tree in the grove, the Grand Mother of those that surround it. Twenty feet from it is a circular raised stone fire place.

Redwoods are not the only large tree in this forest. Believe it or not, the Douglas Fir grows thick and tall here, too. Their needles are so far up the tree, it's hard to tell what you're looking at. One tip off is that Douglas Firs seem to have more moss growing on them, as does this one in our camp. Bark and the needles and cones beneath the tree assist in identification, too.

More fungus!

We didn't run the generator the entire time we were in Oregon. All the state parks had electric hookups. In California, things change. The state parks no longer offer hookups of any kind - water or electric. California park employees tell us that's because Oregon parks are financed from their gasoline tax and user fees, while California relies primarily on user fees. Even so, California charges more for less.

The road in the Jed Smith campground wasn't much wider than a good bike path ... Made for fun pulling the trailer in and out between the trees.