Day 10

We got up in the redwood forest campground, and grabbed some showers. This took a little skill, as each of the showers was one whole room, with no separate area for the actual shower. You could spray down the toilet, the sink, the mirror, even your towel and clothes if you weren't careful. Brett managed it fairly well, while Rhonda unfortunately had to wait for Princess, who spent 15 minutes in there and hadn't even got to the showering part.

We threw in just a little gas. It was $3.07 a gallon. We were paying $2.47 a gallon up in Florence. We were hoping for more reasonable prices, but whatever. We hit the road again, off to the Avenue of the Giants. It's a scenic road that goes parallel to the US 101 highway, but it takes you through several areas of old-growth redwood forest. Just before we got there, we made a detour into Target to get some supplies. They were woefully inadequate in that department, unfortunately. However, Brett got the 2010 GPS map update there, so he was happier than usual, and the increase of the GPS abilities is really starting to worry Rhonda about her status and necessity on this trip. lol.

Back on the road, we detoured onto the Avenue of the Giants. Our first stop was a small house made out of the trunk of a redwood tree. Inside, it was about 20' across. We then drove through another tree, drove on top of a fallen tree log, and even stopped for the farmer's market in Myer's Flats, CA. It was a bustling hub of business among the THREE stands they had set up for the entire market. Pathetic.

Fuel was becoming an issue by then, so we pulled into Leggett, CA for a fill-up. No difference in price there. We sucked it up and filled the tank, then we took off to Fort Bragg. On the map, the road's fairly straight, but it's a completely different experience driving it. Lots of steep curves, and you couldn't get past about 40 mph before you had to slow down to 15 mph for a sharp turn. It was like that for 20 miles. Pretty cool, but pretty tiring.

We towards Mendocino and started thinking about campsites. The first campsite that we tried was full so we managed to find a back way to the highway. At the end of our detour, we discovered another campsite. Alas, it was full too. But once again, we decided to ask if there were any spots. Yet again, another camper cancelled and there was one spot left. And we took it being the jerks that we are (especially since there was another car lined up behind us who got rejected). We dumped off our stuff and looked at the cell phone. No signal. We really wanted to call home so we jumped in the truck and headed to Mendocino. Well we got service, but apparently the phone is unable to call internationally yet. Stupid phone that Rhonda came very close to chucking in the ocean. Brett called the company, but apparently you cannot use the cell to call for trouble shooting. Stupid phone.

We decided to have supper at this guidebook reccommended place. Brett enjoyed his fish and chips and Rhonda had a good steak sandwich. After supper we found a coffee shop with WiFi and had some tea and updated the blog. This coffee shop was full of interesting people and lots of dogs (all pitbulls).

We went back to the campsite and started to set up the tent. Rhonda was blowing up the air mattresses and she heard Brett ask, "Do you know what poison oak looks like?". After Rhonda's reply no, Brett proclaimed that he now did. So Rhonda sent him to the washroom with the cool soap strips, put on some Benadryl and a bandaid. We finished setting up the tent and made a fire.

We hung out by the fire (really close to it actually because it was cool and damp). We heard some crackling in the bushes and were somewhat scared (in the morning we felt really stupid because we saw some really scary bunnies and a squirrel).

200 km. And everybody's still in the truck.