As you saw in the last blog the view was lovely but we didn’t bring our snow shoes.  We did intend to stay in the Coos Bay area for Thanksgiving; as we enjoyed the setting, the town and the RV Park which was very good.   

But we needed to move South as it was cold brrr brrrr. So we headed for Gold Beach. The camp site we stayed at overnight was run by Germans, accents and all. This is a place where gold was found on the beach in powder form and men set up a system whereby they could extract the gold from the sand. I don't think anyone got too rich there.

Our next stop was to be Klamath however, when we called to reserve, the person we spoke with was not interested unless we intended to stay more than one night; so I said we would stay three. We arrived on Thanksgiving around 3.30pm and opened the gate as no one was in the office and 2 more RVs followed us in, they stayed one night and next day we were the only customers. That night Ray (the owner) lit a big fire in a large recretation room for us and told us where to go in Crescent City to get Thanksgiving dinner. We had a lovely Seniors Thanksgiving meal - the whole works, soup and pumpkin pie included; we enjoyed our meal as we were hungry. 

The following day we visited the Trees of Mystery, rode the gondola to the top of the mountain; hiked down a very steep, and in places difficult trail to the bottom and then rode up and down again to experience the ride down. At the top we had spectacular views of snow covered mountains to the East and the Pacific to the West.

On our last day we went looking for elk (Roosevelt Elk - the largest elk) and saw quite a sizable herd after we had hiked Prairie Creek Forest which was beautiful. We dropped into a CA State Park information center and met a young man sitting inside; we had passed a bike on the way in. We got chatting and he told us that he had cycled from NC to CA to see the Redwoods; he had the book with him showing an enormous redwood that had inspired him to undertake his cycle-trek across the USA to see these lovely trees. He hopes to cycle back and go back to college.

On our last night Ray gave us smoked salmon that he had caught and smoked himself. Then he took us in an all-terrain vehicle, all over his property, right down to the area where the original town of Klamath used to be. 

Klamath and its bridge were washed away in 1964. Some of the original bridge is still standing. If you drive across the bridge on 101 that has 2 gold bears (one either side) this is the replacement bridge; however it is further up the river than the original and twice as high. Since then we've discovered that a lot of small towns have been washed away over the years by rivers in Northern CA.