Part 3: Albion River Inn, CA to Grants Pass, Or

20170804-06

The Trip

We spent great night at Albion River Inn.  The food is great and we spent some time talking to the ARI owner about Irish Whiskey and he even let us sample his bottle of Middleton's Very Rare whiskey.  After ARI, we headed north on SR-1 toward our final destination for this segment: Grants Pass, OR.

The Photos

The photos below are what we saw.

The ARI is a place that we have stayed many times and every time has been awesome.

 After ARI we headed north to Ft. Bragg where we saw some of the local tourists.  These folks were checking out the sights.  On her, the swelling around the ankles indicate congestive heart failure.  On him, the sores on his legs indicate who-knows-what.  But, in both cases, the future is rather grim.  And for the rest of us, we will be paying for their health care in their "end days".

In downtown Ft. Bragg, the Guest House Museum was available for viewing.

Behind the museum there were logging artifacts.  This "big wheel" was used to drag logs through the forest.

The center hub of the big wheel was rather complex.

The upper part of the big wheel had rollers for the winch cables.

In the early days of logging, they built log railways to ease the friction due to dragging the logs.  Note the circular profile of the wheels which were designed to roll on raw logs.

In the center of Ft. Bragg there is a train station for the "Skunk Train" which was a steam train.  But, in reality the actual train is diesel.

Next to the Skunk Train station was a very extensive model railroad museum.

The model railroad museum was really detailed and the biggest one that we have seen.

Check out the detail on this scene with the gravity-driven log crane.

This is the diesel locomotive that pulls the Skunk Train.

In front of the Guest House Museum was a section from a huge redwood tree.  The tree was 1700+ years old when logged.

The plaque for the tree.

North of Ft. Bragg is this wooden trestle railroad bridge.

At the furthest north point of SR-1 at the coast, there is a nice bay with many rock outcroppings.

We traveled north on SR-1 and we passed many slumps that were due to unstable geology.  This part of California and Southern Oregon suffers from many slumps and eventually a large slide will isolate huge sections of the countryside.

I had scoped out the area via Google Maps and I selected the Samoa Recreation area that was right on the bay next to Arcata.  Our campsite was right on the water.  The view above was from our campsite.

From Arcata we traveled north on US-101 and then east on SR-299 and north on SR-93.

South of Happy Camp we encountered a roadblock due to a fire in progress.  There was plenty of equipment on the job.  The pilot car was needed to escort us past the equipment.

In some places the fire came right down to the road.

This team was on the opposite side of the highway in case the fire jumped the highway.

The air quality was terrible.  Choking smoke covered the whole area for at least 30 miles.

Much further north on the highway and closer to Happy Camp we came to another burn in progress.  The good news, if one could find good news in something like this, was that the wind was calm.

We arrived in Grants Pass, Or and spent the night with a Unimog friend Mark.  The following day he suggested that we take the boat tour on the Rogue River.  It sounded like fun so away we went.  The photo above is the line to board the boat.  This was a very popular attraction in Grants Pass.

The tour provider had built custom jet boats powered by 3 pumped-up V8 motors.

The jet boats were custom, aluminum hulled crafts with a stand-up pilot cabin.

Once on the river we saw plenty of rafters on the water out for fun.

The high-rent district in Grants Pass is on the river.  Some of the river-front properties had nice decks.

A number of the river-front houses had nice landscaped grounds.

At one of the numerous pull-outs we passed a turtle on a log.

The local power company provided a deck on their poles that was occupied with an osprey nest.  A breeding pair of osprey will return to the same nest year after year.

In this area, the local sheriff has a boat patrol.

Further down river we encountered a doe and her fawn that were swimming across the river.

The osprey in the area occupied a portion of an abandoned bridge for their huge nest.



A large blue heron passed us on his way to a perch in the tall pine trees.


 
This is a Fairbanks-Morse "hit and miss" gas engine that was used to pump water to the orchards.  The pump was caught in one of the many floods and has been too heavy to move.



Entering Hell Gate Canyon.

Photos and Text Copyright Bill Caid 2017, all rights reserved.
For your enjoyment only, not for commercial use.