High expectations, low fulfillment.....

Our plan for today was to drive from Lake Country to Leggett, California. Leggett begins a stretch of Costal Redwoods, that extend for 50 miles from Leggett to Fortuna. Then they begin again north of Eureka, and extend to the Oregon border.

We had reservations at the Redwood River Resort RV Resort north of Leggett. It is an affiliate park to my membership campground program. We purchased a membership in 2002, and I still had some credit left in that program, so our stay here would cost us nothing.

According to my campground book, it was a great place with TV cable hookups, hot tubs, and pools and a clubhouse with amenities. That wasn’t exactly what we got, but I will tell you about that a little later.

Our first stop for the day was at Lake Mendocino. We noticed the lake was very, very, low. When we lived near there, many enjoyable summer days were spent at the lake. So for old time’s sake, we let Coco run, as we walked near the lake edge.

Then 20 miles north, we stopped again, in Willits, and filled the gas tank, and did our grocery shopping at Safeway. Willits is a cute little town, and we were ready to make lunch, but I remembered there was a beautiful rest stop about 10 miles north of Willits.

So, we drove the ten additional miles before we stopped for lunch. They had a lovely pet walking area, so Caren and Coco walked through a little redwood grove, while I put away the groceries and made our lunch.

Then the final 30 miles was through beautiful pine forests and some oak, madrone, and Redwood trees.

We pulled into the Redwood River Resort and found out because it was off-season, the clubhouse was closed, no pool, no spa, and worst of all, for Caren, they didn’t have any cable TV hookups. I was able to get Internet connectivity occasionally with my Verizon Card, but it was very slow and not too reliable. It dropped off the Internet about every 10-15 minutes. We did have good cell phone reception, so Caren was able to talk to her family and Carrie as much as she wanted.

The campground was in a Redwood grove, but it was pretty run down, with some old trailers, some long-term module homes, and the bathrooms were under construction and didn’t look so great from the outside. They did have a lot of hot water, and I appreciated taking a long, long, hot shower, while Caren took hers in the RV.

After setting up and hooking up the RV, we took a fairly strenuous hike down a very steep path to the Eel River. They call it the “huff and puff” trail, because by the time you climb back up you are doing that a lot.

We thought Coco would be safe to let "off leash" because there was a steep bank on one side and the river on the other. She ran right into the river! It is a good thing she chose a shallow spot or the current would have taken her down stream. Back on the leash for the duration of this trip.

Dinner was early since there isn’t much else to do here. We are planning on watching a movie and getting a good night sleep, so we can head out fairly early in the morning.

Tomorrow, we are going to start driving north, and then turn around and drive south. I will explain that in the next blog.