several campsites dotted around it and that would provide easy access to the
Redwood National Park the next day. When we reached the town we found
we had time to drive by a few of the campsites in order to pick one before it
got dark, a luxury we had not been able to afford the day before - or on many
subsequent days as it turned out. So we spent the next half hour or so
looking at three different campsites. Following this scouting trip our decision
was simple - move on! Perhaps it was seeing them by daylight, but the
camps did not look pretty, popular, or even open in the case of the third one,
which seemed instead to be a machinery graveyard. We decided to head on
to Crescent City where we knew there was a larger, more expensive RV park
- part of the Kampgrounds of America (KOA) chain. We also decided that
Crescent City would contain more restaurants and, well, civilization than
Klamath seemed to. As we left the town however, we saw something that
nearly made us turn around and change our minds. A huge house-sized
sculpture of a man and blue cow guarding the entrance to 'Trees of Mystery'
theme park. How often do you see that? We later learned that the giant
redwood carving was of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox...not that that
helped to explain things.
As the sun set we found ourselves driving right beside the ocean once
more. This time we were on a narrow stretch of land, maybe 20 metres wide,
with a fresh water lagoon on the right of us as we drove along with the sun
extinguishing itself into the Pacific on our left. Simply stunning.
We reached Crescent City after the campsite office had closed so we had to
choose our own site and settled on one nestled under the trees. Driving back