Day 21, 21 June 2015

106 Visitors

Posing by a Big Tree along the Costal Trail

The day started off with the usual fog and grey. This was our day off and we had a yummy breakfast of the caramel scones that Cathy made yesterday. We got some crackers, cheese, northwest cherries that Drew and Cathy brought us, carrots and the snicker doodles together for a lunch to bring for a hike we planned to do. We waited till Dottie, Leon and Terrie arrived and had a short chat with them before we left. We took a lovely drive down Pebble Beach Road to show Drew and Cathy the beautiful scenic drive and a cute little house we saw for sale. We stopped at a store and got a few groceries before heading out to the Trees of Mystery tourist site to show Drew and Cathy the incredible museum of Indian artifacts that we had seen before we started our lighthouse duty.

Spotted Slug, 4 inches long

After visiting there we went back to the trailhead at the lagoon where Fred and I had stopped nearby previously to nap at and I had taken a 2-3 mile hike along the coast. It was so pretty that we decided to hike the entire 4-mile trail that went to an overlook of the Klamath River. The day was still overcast and breezy and stayed that way for the hike. The trail went up and down along the coastline and we quickly warmed up in the humidity and were down to t-shirts. We stopped at Hidden Beach where we had to walk down to it for a short way and then across the sand to a big rock. We rested a bit and had some snacks and then continued back on the main trail. It wandered up, down and around the lush trees vegetation, flowers and views of the seas through the trees. At damp or muddy areas in the trail we saw the sticky banana slugs that were yellow and some had spots. We saw a family down on the beach and then only one backpacker coming from the other direction, about 1 mile from the lookout. Along the trail near the end we heard the seals barking far below. The highest we got was about 600 feet but we had constant up and down which totaled about 1200 feet. Tired and hungry we reached our destination which was a pretty little overlook where we could see the mouth of the mighty Klamath and some beach and rock areas that had seals on the rocks and swimming about. Through binoculars I watched one seal swim up to a large rock and look at it and then propel itself right onto it with one swift launch. On the beach I spied a group of vultures eating at a seal carcass. The four of us sat down on the grass and had a nice little lunch of the stuff we packed and had a well-deserved rest. Not too far in the distance farther up the trail we could see the road and other lookout point where our backpacker started from.  After 30 minutes we packed up and headed back the way we had come and the 4 miles back didn’t seem as long as it did on the way in.  The skies tried to brighten on the way back but it was still overcast. It was good to get back to the car and take the boots off and relax. My feet were very tired and beat.

Old Klamath River Bridge Bear

We took a drive south and went across the new bridge over the Klamath with the golden bear statues. Drew and Cathy remembered getting pictures in their younger days with bear statues at a bridge entrance, but these gold bears weren’t the ones. We knew which ones they were talking about and drove a few miles to the where the old bridge was before it got wiped out in a flood in December 1964. Here was the only remaining piece of the bridge with two cement bears guarding the entrance. These were the bears they had been looking for, for years! We stopped and they happily took pictures. Back in the car and we did a few sight seeing roads and stopped at the roadside overlook that we had looked at from our hike. We could see the exact spot we had had lunch at! So off we went back to Crescent City for dinner at the Fisherman’s restaurant. After dinner we returned to our lighthouse home in time to see sunset. The weather had cleared somewhat and St. George could be clearly seen on the horizon and was forlornly beautiful as we looked at it through a 50-power scope and could see the sunlight through the glass lantern room on top of the tower. Other railings about the structure as well as the boom that was used to pick up the small ships to the station were clearly seen also. There were some visitors milling about waiting for sunset and we invited them to look into the scope to see St. George. We met a man who said he flew around it one time when he flew up the coast in his private plane. A crowd of us watched as the sun popped out under a cloudbank and lit the sea up with a golden carpet of light that was shimmering on the water. This gorgeous display only lasted a few minutes as the sun sank lower and then squished out of sight. We tried to watch a bit of TV and look at pictures but all of us were very tired from the long hike and we all went off to bed. I wanted to go to sleep also had no interest in writing the days blog, it could wait till the next day. So off to sleep I went, exhausted with a sore foot and dreams of giant banana slugs creeping up an isolated tower out in a rollicking sea to keep company a lonely keeper as her only friends.

Another Great Sunset!