We left on Saturday morning, June 30th, and headed north on 101. It was hot. My air conditioning wasn't working. What do you do when you're driving in a hot car? You stop for ice cream, of course. (We did that repeatedly throughout the trip.) We made a pit stop at a little general store in Hopland. We bought bottled mineral water, sodas, and ice cream. We ate our goods on the porch of the general store while helplessly watching a dying baby bird that had fallen from its nest. So sad! The mother just continued on with her collecting food/feeding routine for the other baby birds, ignoring the gasping, dying one 20 feet below. M and I eventually wondered if the mother had spitefully pushed the baby bird out of the nest because perhaps it was a runt.

That night, we camped in Richardson Grove State Park redwood forest. But first we ate dinner at a pizza restaurant in Garberville. The service was laughably terrible! The waitress admitted to being new on the job... we presumed new to waitressing in general, too. She appeared to write down our order, but then came back soon after and asked us exactly what we wanted on our pizza. She obviously didn't hear that we'd ordered beer, so we had to tell her again. Then she asked us again what kind of dressing we wanted on our salad. She brought our salad without an extra plate (we told her we were going to split it)... but by this time, we figured our lives would be less complicated if we ate the salad off one plate. When the pizza came, she forgot to bring M an extra plate. He asked three times for a plate before he got one. She did apologize profusely... but still! Then we wondered if our bill would be correct. Thank heavens, it was.

By the time we got campground, it was around 10:30 and we had to set up our tent in the dark. We were glad we camped in Richardson Grove because, surprisingly, there weren't many people there. We weren't, however, happy that we didn't use any type of padding under our sleeping bags that night. We vowed we'd buy some before our backpacking trip to Lassen at the end of July.

We continued our drive north the next day, after stopping for breakfast in Garberville. Our destination for that night was Crescent City. On the way there, we stopped in Eureka to look at the beautiful Victorian homes and sat on the harbor looking at the boats for a while. M and I eyed the stray paddle boat that was tied to the pier. M wanted to take it for a whirl around the harbor; I said with my luck, the owner would come running out from wherever he/she was and start shooting. So we didn't.

We eventally got to Crescent City and stayed in a cheap motel. We ate pizza (again!) at a pizzeria across the street from the motel because everything else was closed by 9:35 pm. We watched segments of various programs on the television before going to sleep, including a riveting program about the making of Bay Watch.

The next morning, we ate at the local Carls Jr. before hitting the road to Oregon. Our desination was the Southern Oregon Caves, which are located approximately 3 hours north of Crescent City.

To get to the caves from the town of Cave Junction in southern Oregon, you have to take this little road that doesn't appear to be going anywhere, especially to an Oregon State Park. I wondered, shouldn't there be more cars on this road? Well, it appears as though we were on the right road because we eventually arrived at the caves. We had over an hour to kill before our cave tour began, so we decided to enjoy an ice cream sundae at the cafe inside the chateau. It was still hot. Unbearably hot.

The caves weren't nearly as spectacular as Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico (which we visited in the summer of '99), but they were interesting nonetheless. We especially loved the redwood chateau, though. The chateau is a beautiful huge inn that was built back in the late 1800s.

Back in Cave Junction, we had Mexican food for dinner. Yay! I was getting tired of pizza and hamburgers, the apparent extent of food fare in rural northern California. We also enjoyed blended frozen margaritas to cool us off.

We went back to Crescent City that night. Dare I say it, but we also stopped into the Wal Mart there to stock up on more camping gear, specifically foam mats to put under our sleeping bags. It turned into a shopping spree. On top of the foam sleeping bag mats, we also bought an inflatable mattress for our car camping escapades. I bought a thingy called an Ab Wheel so that I can develop awe-inspiring abdominals and M bought chaise lounges for his roof deck. I wondered how we were going to fit everything in the car but, surprisingly, we did.

Before leaving Crescent City the next morning, we checked out the lighthouse and ate the most excellent fish and chips at "Fisherman Restaurant" (that's what it's called). On our journey south, we decided we'd check out Petrolia and the Lost Coast that M's friends had raved about.

South of Eureka, we fishtailed over to Ferndale, a tiny charming town with authentic Victorian architecture. Moving south of Ferndale, we hit ramshackle twisty-turny roads that were in very bad condition. We kept wondering if we'd taken a wrong turn. Plus, there were no other cars on the road. Not one, except for a Caltrans striping vehicle and 3 motorcycles. After about 30 miles, we finally got breathtaking views of the coast. No people! Just miles and miles of pristine beach. We got into Petrolia after another 10 miles. We thought we could get gas there, but the town was much smaller than we anticipated. No gas stations.

We went over to the beach and tried to find the lighthouse (a 6 mile hike), but turned back when the gale-force winds started up. We practically went nowhere walking in ankle-deep sand with the wind in our faces. It was very tiring.

We ate dinner that night in a tiny cafe in Petrolia. All the local folk were very friendly. One rancher insisted we buy some gasoline from him ("It's just a short drive up this road to my ranch", he said. "Why don't you just camp on my property tonight?") and we were invited to a Danish 4th of July celebration with a pig and turkey roast at another ranch (which we had to refuse, since we had to get back to SF).

We camped at a Humboldt County campground that night near Petrolia. We were 2 of maybe 15 campers there! We were dismayed when some of the campers at one site started blaring their hip-hop music from the car speakers. But, luckily, it didn't last longer than one song. It was so beautiful and quiet with the full moon. We fell asleep to the rushing of the river.

We got up bright and early the next morning (the 4th of July) and hit the country road back to 101. We saw several deer along the way. Once we reached Garberville and 101, the heat got bad again. We stopped in Ukiah for ice cream. And cold drinks in Willits.

I think I ate more ice cream in that trip than I had in the past two years! Note to self: get air conditioning fixed before next road trip.

We arrived into San Francisco at 3:30 on the 4th of July. We had grand plans to watch the spectacular fireworks display at Pier 39 but it turned out being incredibly foggy. We couldn't see the fireworks! But it was a good evening nonetheless, as M's friend from Germany had just arrived into town and a group of us went out to dinner.

That's the end of the 5-day road trip story.