The woman's response convinced us of our perception of Crescent City: ‘I
could listen to you all day, you speak so proper and we're such hillbillies!’
From the horse's mouth. Fortunately, she did let us go in to watch the film
rather than speak to her all day.
When we returned to our campsite we were not in the best of spirits. It was
raining, Crescent City was not pleasant, and the campsite seemed darker
than the previous night. As we drove into our spot among the trees creepy
became creepier when we realised our water connection pipe - which we had
left attached to the site tap - was missing.
According to the campsite staff - a real ‘surfer dude’ who could not
have cared less about the theft - nobody had been around. We did briefly
consider the possibility that he had taken it himself, to sell in the campsite
store perhaps?
So we retired to our van, locked the doors and tried not to get freaked
out by every little noise during the night. The next morning we headed south
and ‘got the hell out of Dodge’.
We spent the morning and early afternoon driving through more magnificent
woodlands, first south on the 101 and then east through the Trinity Alps on
the 299. The scenery was stunning but also made bleak by the fact that we
were driving in and out of the rain. The Trinity Alps were particularly beautiful,
with patches of forest interspersed with bare rock face. In the distance we
could see fog drifting over the mountainside like columns of smoke. We also
saw lots of shops by the road selling chainsaw art, 'functional sculptures',