The road is pretty curvy and the cliff are pretty high and rocky through this section, but the scenery was beautiful. We got into some heavy "marine air" fog as we drove.
We stopped for lunch at Vinny's Pizza in Fort Bragg, CA and on the way out of town we filled up with gas and drove through a coffee stand. I love that every little town along the coast has a coffee stand with good espresso. Makes the drive short! lol
After lunch, the fog burned off and we were able to see a few beaches along the drive. We stopped off at an unnamed beach north of Inglehook and walked the shore for a bit. The sand was pretty hot but the water was crazy chilly!
Pretty soon after the beach we were starting see California Redwoods growing near the roads and as we merged into HWY 101 they became plentiful! Some parts of the Redwood Highway are very tight with giant trees on both sides of the 2 lane roadway.
We set up camp at Humboldt Redwoods State Park, home to the Avenue of the Giants. Our campsite was secluded and fairly quiet. We snacked around the fire and enjoyed the visible canapy.
Tomorrow: exploring the Redwoods.
What We Learned: Today we learned about the great Christmas flood of 1964. We watched a video about how the flood impacted the area and how large it was. The locals call it the "1000 year flood." Based on the video and pictures, I believe it! It affected most of Oregon and Northern California. It was a "perfect storm" of circumstances that led to the flooding. The temperatures dropped and the ground froze, then lots of snow fell early in December. Later in the month a warm, wet storm came through and melted much of the snow and dumped many inches of rain on the area, but did not thaw the ground. The resulting flood was devastating. We saw a high water marker in the town of Weott, CA that was 35 feet above the ground, and it was nowhere near the current river.
For the day we traveled 166.6 miles and saw license plates from 20 states and 2 Canadian provinces.
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