Northern California

I'm in another Library, this time its Trinidad CA, and we're travelling North in a campervan we hired from San Francisco. The campervan is a bit of a talking point, as it is painted 'Vegas' style, with cards, dice etc painted on the side. People keep commenting on it and its a great way to meet people.

Anyway, we had Christmas in San Fran, stayed at the Phoenix hotel where we met Todd and Heidi from Fort Bragg. We told them we were thinking of doing a road trip to see the giant redwoods in northern California, and they gave us their contact details and told us to stop by for new year if we wanted to.

We stayed with Tinkerbell and Phoenix in Sunnyvale while they went house hunting, and we sourced a van. It was strange saying goodbye to our friends whom we had travelled across country with, but we will return to them in San Fran around the 12th Jan.

We headed out of San Francisco and stayed at Point Reyes beach the first night out, right by the storm beach. The waves are huge all along the coast, and it was nice falling asleep to the sound of the waves. We are taking it slow and enjoying this beautiful yet dramatic coastline. I never imagined California would look like this. We stayed at a campsite near Guernville, then travelled up to Fort Bragg, via Mendocino, where we attended a dinner party at Todd and Heidi's (and Ginger the cat, who loves attention. Thanks for the claw marks all over my chest Ginger!). It was great to spend New year with our new friends, and thank Todd, Heidi and the gang for their hospitality.

We stayed by the beach at Mad River, Arcata last night, and are on our way to the beach at Trinidad right now. We're both nursing colds at the moment, and are taking it easy, no hiking for a while, but we are thinking of doing a little more once we're better. This is what happens when you get off trail and start to be around humans again, we catch diseases! The temperature is around 16 Celsius during the day, too cold for the locals but fine for us, and its been mostly dry so far. The sun is shining today.

The redwoods really are giant, and we drove through the avenue of the giants to get here. We are off to see the tallest trees in the world tomorrow. I'm totally blown away by them, and can't wait to share our photos with you all. We're thinking of getting up to Oregon, but our plans are always changing, so who knows what next...

G