North on the Redwood Scenic Highway

Tuesday May 30th: We left the beautiul Russian River area and began driving north on US-101, also called the Redwood Scenic Highway toward Oregon. We plan to drive on up to an RPI campground, Redwood Trails Resort, to spend the night. As we travel north we slowly began seeing the roadside grass and the grass in the fields turn from solid dry brown to a sprinkling of green to solid green the further we travel. The drought conditions in Southern and Central California are really severe and they need a nice long turn to rain for several years to recover.

The Redwood Trails campground was small, but beautifully situated. An old origional red schoolhouse and an old caboose are out front with a large horse corral behind us. A wood carver had set up business next to the campground and had his works throughout the campground and store. Wonderfully done works, but we had nowhere to carry them. As we were setting down to dinner we looked out the window and five big Elk were drifting their way across the campground. Tried to get a picture of them, but it didn't turn out too well, but will put it on here anyway. If you look hard you can see two of them in the center of the picture. One faceing us and the other facing away. The old caboose is just to the left of the Elk and the old schoolhouse is further left, but out of the picture. We saw more Wednesday morning and a gentleman camped near us said that a herd of about forty wandered the area. Shortly after leaving Wednesday morning we saw a large number of them laying in a field a short way from the road.