USA ROAD TRIP | Driving From California to Oregon

USA ROAD TRIP | Driving From California to Oregon

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey there. Good afternoon. How’s it going? Today is Wednesday, July 23rd, 2025. Currently 76° F. That is 24° C. Sorry about the uh whining noise in the background. That will be explained in a second. This is Willitz High School, which I attended in 10th and 11th grades from 1985 to 1987. I then moved down to the Bay Area to Oakland, California and lived there for two years and then attended two more high schools. Skyline High School in Oakland where Tom Hanks went to high school and then uh in my senior year to uh Berkeley High School. So uh that right there is a momentous spot in my life which is that is where I started hitchhiking. I have been a hitchhiker off and on for about 40 years now. Actually you know what that is wrong. That is not where I started hitchhiking. Where I actually first started hitchhiking was at the dirt road where you turn onto to drive out to the house where I was raised. I made a video showing that house last summer. And so when I was about 8 or so years old, this, by the way, is the start of my book, Following My Thumb, A Decade of Unabashed Wander Lust. So great. The uh alarm just turned off. That little car says advanced security system. So the uh buzzing noise I guess was this guy uh testing the security system for the high school. Here you can see home of the Wolverines, the mascot for Willlets High. And so uh a very quick synopsis of my childhood. My parents and myself and my younger brother moved to Willlets in 197677. It was kind of a process from further south. I was four or five years old and my parents bought land about uh 5 or 6 miles outside of town here out Sherwood Road there. The other schools that I went to are further uh south in town. And so uh I would take the school bus home, but the bus would drop me at the bottom of the dirt road that then led to our driveway. So bus takes us four or five miles out, drops us at the end of this road, dirt road going off of the paved road there. And then it was about a mile and a half up to our driveway to our house which uh my parents built from scratch in the woods out there. So a real uh country forest hippie back to the land kind of a childhood. And so uh at some point in my youth when I was around somewhere in the range of 7 8 9 years old something like that then I got the idea to uh start hitchhiking out that dirt road. The bus would drop me off. Sometimes there would be somebody there to pick me up. my uh mom, dad, maybe a neighbor, but a lot of the time I was left walking alone a mile and a half home. My brother was 2 and 1/2 years younger, and to the best of my recollection, he never took the school bus along with me. For some reason, he was always on a different school bus. And so, I was always walking out that road alone. And so at some point I decided, you know what? I’m just going to sit here and wait for a neighbor to come along and uh get a ride with a neighbor. So I would sit down on the road, open up a book, read, hang out, and it worked uh quite effectively. So later once I came to Willlets High School here then along with uh my friend Abram often times then we would uh not take the school bus out there. Abram lived uh out the same road but not as far out. And so we would uh you know do something in town, go play uh video games at the arcade or hang out with friends. I did have other friends other than just Abram by the way, including I have to say Trey Cool, drummer for Green Day. He went to Willlets High School. If you doubt me, look it up on Wikipedia. And we were in the same grade. We were in the same group of friends. I hung out with Trey here and elsewhere around town. And so if uh we didn’t take the bus back home, then we would hitchhike it. And so my hitchhiking adventures continued there at the road going out 5 six miles out there to my uh house. And then further hitchhiking adventures continued from here. My first time hitchhiking out of town was with Abram. We skipped class or the whole day I guess and uh walked up to the uh end of town here which is just a little ways up there and started hitchhiking and went to Garberville, another town about an hour or so north of here. And I will be driving through there in the course of this video. My second hitchhiking adventure out of town was also from Willlets starting at Highway 20. So go a mile south down there and you get to another highway that goes over to the coast over to Fort Bragg and Mendescino once again with Abram. We hitchhiked over there. We might have even uh stayed overnight. I’m not sure if that was that same trip or went for the day or something. But uh those were my two biggest hitchhiking adventures before I then went to Europe for the summer in 1990 and started a whole big hitchhiking uh adventure there. But uh anyways, so now back to the present moment. My car is over there. So I wanted to uh show this other mural. I guess it’s more of a uh yeah, high school thing. Cheerleaders, Wolverine Pride, and then here is the uh courtyard, the cafeteria, their library, another mural of a dragon, and the various buildings. So I could go on and on about uh memories from uh attending willai but I will not get distracted with that. So as I said today is July 23rd my last video filmed I forget 4 or 5 days ago or something and the only video that I filmed since I got back from my big 7-month adventure. And so, uh, I came back about, uh, 12 or so days ago and have been here, uh, in Menesino County down in Yukaya visiting family, hanging out, catching up with the videos of Europe, and am now starting a road trip. So, drove from Yukaya 30 minutes up to Willlets here, and I’m now heading out that way going to Oregon. Not exactly sure what I will be doing, but have general plans. I will visit my friend Eric in Salem who just moved into a brand new house, a custommade new house. So, see his new house. I have mail collected there uh over the past 7 months to uh deal with because I use his address for my legal address. And then maybe visit my friend Sterling and uh we’ll see what else. Possibly do some camping. I have camping gear in here, but uh not exactly sure. And I will mention that I have a flight booked in 8 days, so about a week. Not going to say where, but uh I’m definitely looking forward to it. Somewhere I’ve been before, and it is not outside of the country, so probably a lot of you will guess where I’m going. But uh I just wanted to do a uh quick uh tour of the car. Oops. Here we go. and just show that I have uh some backpacks in here. One, two, three backpacks. Way more stuff than I need, but I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do. And so I just kind of threw everything in there that I might possibly need. And then my other little backpack there. Got my uh Master Lock uh anti- theft device, which I highly recommend, especially when your car is full of a lot of stuff. It’s one thing to have the car stolen, which has happened to me, and uh it’s another thing to have a car load of all your stuff in it stolen and lose much more than just the car. And then uh shoes, got some food and snacks, hiking uh stick, my towel there, extra water, pillow, etc. So there you go. The uh next adventure begins. summertime in the US. That is partly why I came back here was to uh have some uh fun adventures back home. So, time to get the drive started. I have no idea where I will stay tonight. I will stay in a hotel somewhere along the way or maybe even camp, but thinking probably go for a hotel tonight. All the way up to Oregon is whatever 8 9 10 hours and I’m getting a, you know, 1:00 uh in the afternoon start. So, uh let’s do it. head north and I will be sharing a few memories along the way. Here we go. So, this is the north end of Willlets and this is probably where Abram and I started hitchhiking up to Garberville Eureka. We’re headed towards Eureka Leightonville 22 Eureka 137 Crescent City 211 miles. So highway 162 Kovaleo Round Valley Reservation. So this road up ahead follows the Eel River and that is where we would go swimming in the summertime with my family and friends way back in the 80s. So, uh, you drive up here, turn right, headed out to Kovaleo, which is a town which is a ways out there. You don’t have to go all the way out there. And then the road goes along the river, and there are lots of different swimming spots there. Very, very tempting to uh stop for a swim now, but uh I’m in the mood to make some miles. So, uh I actually did that uh drive about a decade ago. I think that it was in 2014 with Abram and another friend of ours from school, John, and we drove all the way out to Kovaleo and then went to this uh fire lookout for some reason just like for a you know adventure for the day. So almost to Leightonville up there and past this very interesting uh building I guess a uh like mechanic shop or storage shed or something. Okay. So there’s a sign that says private property but it’s like with a bunch of other random signs. Seems like it should be fine just to uh show this. So, Route 66, we cheat the other guys and pass the savings on to you. Okay. Some license plates. Cactus tire boots and patches. Albian Little River Volunteer Fire Department. So, that must be what this was originally. Okay. The hangers for the uh fire trucks. And then all kinds of rusted out tools and pieces of machinery. Laguna Honda meetings in rear. Save gold arrow stamps. It pays whatever a gold arrow stamp is. Fosters blogger meets today noon to 12:10. A 10-minute meeting Mulligan Lane. And then here you have this uh hangout spot, bench, old car seat, [Music] little toy cars and tractor. Warning. And the surgeon general says that your mama must have been smoking crack, drinking whiskey, and eating pace to have had a kid as ugly as you. I won’t take it personally. Life is tough. It’s tougher if you’re stupid. John Wayne. All right, let’s keep on cruising. WCO Foods. The name is an acronym because they operate in Wyoming. No, no, no, no. Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, Oregon, all of the most extreme western states. Winkco. Little fun fact there for you. And so we’re coming into Leightonville, which is sort of barely a town. mostly just a uh cluster of various businesses for people to stop at as they’re driving through. So, I don’t have any memories in Leightonville itself other than just stopping to fill up gas and maybe get a snack or drink or whatever. But I do have a memory from nearby Bransome. So all Willlets high schoolers would go on a road trip or rather a field trip to uh Branskum as part of the uh actually I’m not even sure that it was high school. Maybe it was middle school. I forget now. But uh Bransum is out there to the west towards the coast a little bit. And it is like a historical old ranch, something like that. And so we would go out there and I think stay overnight and then look around at all these old uh buildings and hike around and stuff like that. Okay, I’m stopping here for something very random that I discovered that this market has good ones of these things which if they have them today then I will show you what they are. It’s very random, but uh so we go on this uh field trip and my friend Abram is in my class and he’s there on the field trip and uh at one point he gets busted for carving his initials into the old historical ranch house. And I forget what happened to him, if he was kicked out. I think he was kicked out and had to go back home. Uh I forget the details if it was the first day or the second day or what exactly, but uh yeah, bad move on Abram’s part. Okay, let’s uh buy something here. But first, let’s take a look at what is on the bulletin board here. Sports physicals. Reggae on the river, August 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. I have been to it way back in 1988 and I think another year maybe an 87 as well. Missing person. Sorry to hear it. Judith Roberts, Cameron Dan McDonald and the White Lies live in Leightonville again. Reggae on the river. Save the date. Bell Springs Volunteer Fire Department. Oh, okay. That’s funny. We were just at the fire department. Fat Fry in the Park music festival. Donner party picnic. Oh, and Grass Valley, which is much closer to Donner Pass. That’s interesting. The Hog Farm. So, I need to mention the Hog Farm in particular in relation to Abram. But first, what did I buy? And so, here we go. What did I buy at Fosters Ranch Market? Boom. Toothbrushes. A$1.9 each. So, sometime like a year or two or three ago or something. Then I stopped here on my way south and needed a toothbrush, bought one, and just found it to be perfect. So, for one thing, I don’t like it when it has those like ridges here that I guess are for like cleaning your tongue or something. I just find that it gets in the way. But then it’s just such a basic simple design, the right amount of, you know, what do you call that stuff? The uh part that you brush on your teeth, the spines or the hairs or the head of the brush. Anyways, uh yeah, a buck each and I just like them. All right, let’s get cruising. So, one of the flyers on that bulletin board had referenced the hog farm. So, I need to talk about the hog farm, which I believe we will be driving past up ahead here, unless it was at the other end of town and I missed it. But, uh, it is just a little ways outside of Leightonville, right along the highway, or at least the, um, uh, the land is along the highway. Maybe you have to drive in a little little ways to get to it, but I’ve actually never been to the hog farm myself, but Abram has. So, the hog farm is a camp that uh teaches like art and juggling and probably music and I think all kinds of stuff. And Abram went there, I think, as an instructor or maybe he attended first as uh a participant. I forget exactly, but uh anyways, Abram was part of that for several years. And so for anyone who might not have figured it out or didn’t know about it from previous videos, Abram was my best friend from like second grade when we first met all through school and then off and on through adulthood as we went to, you know, different places, lived, you know, in different towns and states, etc. But uh we stayed in touch loosely and have seen each other lots of times, including uh when he was living up here back home at his parents house, which is when we did that little road trip for the day in 2014 with uh John. But as I discussed in a video a while ago, then uh Abram just disappeared off the map and stopped communicating with everybody in his life, basically his family, friends, everybody. And so I made a video talking about how I managed to track him down. No, the video was not about how I managed to track him down. The video was how I managed to track him down. And I talked about how he just disappeared and nobody knew where he was and I didn’t know where he was. But thanks to that video, somebody contacted me who did know where he was and alerted me to him and let me know that in fact he was still alive. And then I will give a very quick uh more recent update which is that he finally actually got back in touch with his family and kind of reconnected. Never explained like what happened, why he disappeared or anything, but it was just kind of a one-time thing in which he met up with his family in person and then disappeared again and is now back off the radar. And I have no idea when I might hear from him again, but I haven’t seen him since 2019 when we did the same road trip together. We started in Yukaya and drove to Eugene and went to that land that he was going to work on that was some land owned by a friend of his. So, uh, Abram is still presumably with us in the world somewhere. All right, back to the hog farm. So, the hog farm was founded by Wavy Gravy. Wavy Gravy was the announcer at Woodstock, the original 1969 Woodstock Festival. And so after that, I don’t know what he did, but eventually he came out here. And uh maybe he’s from here originally. I don’t know. But uh interesting character. And uh so we started up this, you know, arts camp that Abram went to. And so Abram and I were over on the coast together. And I’m pretty sure that it was the hitchhiking trip that I already referenced in which we went over there either for the day or overnight. I remember us staying overnight, sleeping on the beach. I’m not certain if it was that one time that we hitchhike, but probably. I imagine so. So, it was probably a weekend thing. And so, we’re walking down the main street of Mendescino town. So, we’re in Mendescino County right now, but there is a town called Mendescino over on the coast, which I would go out to with my family as a kid, and we would go to the beach and walk around the cute little town. And so, Abram and I were there and uh ran into Wavy Gravy, who I’d never met, but Abram knew him from having gone to the camp. And so, we stopped and talked with him for a bit. And then there is one last little anecdote I will relay which Abram may or may not be happy about me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me mentioning, but I think he probably wouldn’t mind. While at the uh hog farm camp, Abram had a romantic encounter with, are you ready for it? Drew Barrymore, of course, actress, star of ET. She was apparently there attending the camp. You know, this would have been late 80s, so she would have been very young because ET came out in early 80s. Anyway, I’m not going to mention the details that Abram mentioned to me on that one, but uh pretty funny. Okay, I got a lot of miles to cover, so let’s do it. Okay, look closely at this billboard. Welcome to Area 101. So, what that is referring to is, of course, Area 51 in Nevada, a top secret military base or something along those lines, which it is speculated by conspiracy theorists that they’re doing all kinds of secret technological, you know, scientific type of stuff. possibly involving alien spacecraft. And so the area 101 that was on that sign is referencing the road we’re on right now, Highway 101. And so the reason for that is that supposedly there is uh heightened sightings of extraterrestrial, you know, spacecraft, UFOs, paranormal phenomenon, etc. Like it’s some sort of a vortex around here, which it is certainly a unique and mysterious area. That’s for sure. I have never seen a UFO or at least something that I thought was a alien spacecraft myself. But when it comes to whether or not the US government could possibly be making use of alien spacecraft to uh engineer high-tech technology, then I will just say that I am an open-minded skeptic on that. There is a big problem with the belief that aliens could be visiting Earth, even though I prefer the idea that they are, just cuz it kind of sounds cool. But, you know, there’s the whole uh distance situation of the fact that uh the nearest stars are many many light years away. Okay. What is the closest star to our solar system? Is it Alpha Centauri? That might be wrong, but uh I’ll put it down below. Which I believe the closest star is like 8 light years away, something like that. So, you can’t travel the speed of light. And so, you can’t get from here to there or from there to here in 8 years. You can’t go anywhere near the speed of light. And so, uh, just the sheer emptiness of space makes it hard to imagine that any other beings in other solar systems could possibly get over here to visit us. They would have to be living on the other planets or something, which we can see very clearly up close. and know without a doubt that they aren’t habitable planets except for perhaps Mars if you have the right you know technology but uh unless there’s some kind of a way to trick the universe and cover those distances through a wormhole or some technology we can’t fathom or interdimensional travel or something then it’s pretty much impossible possible for other you know intelligent life forms to get to our part of the universe in any kind of a reasonable time frame. So that’s the problem with that. Treehouse Antiques enjoy CocaCola. Obviously not open. Neither is the treehouse, but looks like the gift shop is open. But here you have the world famous treehouse. Believe it or not, window there. So, there is a uh room in the bottom of this huge redwood tree. Look at that thing. Just massive. And so that is a gift shop, I believe. Although I could be wrong, but I think that this was originally a gift shop when it was actually open. Not sure why it closed down. Can’t see too much in there, but uh Oh, there’s a uh looks like a placemat. World famous treehouse, believe it or not. So, that’s funny. That placemat is a photo of this. And at the bottom it says treehouse on the Redwood Highway. Pretty cool. So, Garberville 9 miles and I mentioned reggae on the river which we also saw on that billboard in or bulletin board in Leightonville and that occurs or at least it occurred right here the Eel River over there. So, it’s a reggae festival on the Eel River. Here we have the uh grandfather tree, world famous. Which one is it? I think that one over there. I forget what the uh significance is. I don’t think it’s the tallest one. The oldest oldest redwood maybe. And so maybe the location of the uh rigging on the river festival has changed. I forget. But, uh, this is where it was out there. You can see the river. So, it was on the, uh, river bank when I went to it back in Yeah, I think it was 87 and 88 that I went to it. Richardson Grove State Park. These are all Redwoods you’re seeing here. Redwood National Park is further north. another uh I don’t know hour and a half or something. But this is all redwood territory in patches, different groves here and there. And right here you have wooden carvings. Legend of Bigfoot. So, pieces of redwood carved into various things, including big feet, Sasquatches, [Music] and what about the Sasquatch? Where am I on that one? I am a not open-minded skeptic. If there were big feet, Sasquatches, a body would have been found sometime in the past hundreds of years of them supposedly existing. I don’t think that a uh huge mammal could survive. You have to have a certain amount of them to be able to breed and continue their existence. and to just completely evade any, you know, real verifiable proof forever, I think is not possible. That’s my opinion on that one. King Range National Conservation Area, that is the Lost Coast, which I went to and made a video there last year. Here is Garberville going to get off the highway. to show you the town and then get back on at the other end of town. Just going to uh cruise through here. It is another very small town. A little more of an actual town feel than Leightonville. So, uh not a whole lot of memories here. Haven’t really spent any time in the town except for this is where Abram and I hitchhiked to. And then to the best of my recollection, we got here and realize, okay, well, now what do we do? There isn’t much to do around here. And so I think we just like walked out of town. I remember us like walking through the forest just poking around and then we just kind of turned around and headed back hitchhiked back down to Willlets. Daily smoothie specials. Gas 520 per gallon at Chevron. So, we’re almost through town already. And so, the uh King Range or the Lost Coast is one of my favorite places in the world. It is like a 45minut or so drive from here west over to the coast. What is this person doing? And it is a section of coastline in which they couldn’t build a road along it because of the uh mountains King Range. So, it’s a whole range of mountains along the coast. And so, Highway 1 is the Pacific Coast Highway. Wait, no, I think 101 is the Pacific Coast Highway. And then here we go. Getting back on the freeway. Eureka North. There you go. So, 101. And so, uh, yeah, it’s 101 on the coast down in Southern California, then it goes inland, and then you have Highway 1 on the coast north of San Francisco, but then it veers inland and meets up with 101 a little ways south of here. And then 101 is going around the uh Lost Coast and the King Range Mountains out there. And then it comes back to the coast and goes along the coast the rest of the way up Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. Okay. Well, no more towns for a while. Well, there are a couple of little ones that I’m just going to fly through, but there you go. Eureka 63. That is the next town we will be seeing in about an hour. [Music] Hell, I come 40,000 miles over here to see what my pretty little lips going to do to me, baby. [Music] But every single time that I come around, I see you got another man trying to keep you down. [Music] Well, you might think you’re driving me insane, but I ain’t the game that you’re trying to play. Oh, I think you maybe Oh, no. This ain’t my first rodeo. I’ve been around long enough to know some things you can’t take back. Some things you just got to let go. Yes. Well, hell, I got Sammy on the phone. Mickey at home trying to get alone so I can deal with. [Applause] [Music] And here we are coming into Eureka, the largest town in this part of Northern California. I lived here in the fall and winter of 9798. Kind of a long story. I was camped out in the forest near Arcada, which we will be going through next. It is just like 5 or 10 miles north of here. There you go. Lost Coast Brewery. I mentioned the uh Lost Coast. And so I had been living in the woods camping in my tent for a month and I found this work exchange job that didn’t pay anything but uh it included room and board and so got me out of my tent and that was here in Eureka working for this old folks home where I lived there and uh just kind of did really basic stuff helping the elderly people there. Nothing like medical or technical or anything, but uh I lived there for I don’t know maybe 6 weeksish and then it was a rainy, cloudy, cold, rough winter as they are up here. So you can see clouds now. It was nice and sunny further south. And so this is what happens is the Pacific Northwest clouds start to sock in just a little ways south of Eureka here. And then it is a lot more common to be cloudy and rainy from here all the way up, you know, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Vancouver. But uh after however long I was working that uh job here in Eureka, I decided I got to get out of here. I had like no money, but uh I managed to get together enough money to buy a flight to Hawaii to Kauaii. And so I ended up there in uh winter of 1998 and found this job working on an organic farm. Again, a work exchange situation, living on the farm, and uh stayed in Hawaii for 6 months that time. So just going to drive on through Eureka here. and get up to Arcada. Just drive through there, show that cool little town. Definitely got some memories there. So, I’ll have to mention some of those. Lots of uh cool art along here. And then keep on cruising. Try to make some real progress. It is now 4:30 in the afternoon. I got plenty of daylight left. We shall see where I end up. A map of the town. That is awesome. Turn here for Oldtown. Welcome to Eureka. There are 100 plus murals in town. Awesome. An amazing one there. Wow. I have really uh done something different it seems as far as like the city policy or whatever. Look at that. Whatever that box on the sidewalk was had a really cool painting. Very cool. So, they seem to have like legitimized street art and uh encouraged good artists to [Music] paint various spots. Oh, wow. Look at this one on the side of here. What is that? Huh. Strange. Sort of Mcsherish. And again, that uh box thing, whatever it is, like a electrical box or something, all painted up. And yes, I’m watching the road, don’t you worry. All right. So, this is the end of Eureka and then short drive up to the little college town of Arcada, which I also lived in for quite a bit longer than I did here in Eureka. And the sun is back. That’s nice to see. So, a funny thing just happened. I was waiting at a uh stoplight back there and I hear somebody saying something in the car next to me and I look over and they’re kind of looking and waving at me. And so, I roll down the window, viewers of mine who I guess uh live around here. So, uh it wasn’t exactly a conversation because the light turned green and I had to roll. to set a quick hello. Here we go. Getting off the highway. Arcada. So, I have a long history with Arcada. Probably the first time that I ever came here was back when I was a kid and my family was going backpacking in the Marble Mountains and Trinity Alps which are couple hours away from here. And so we would drive up from uh Willlets to the mountains and probably made stops here. And then later during my uh vagabond hitchhiking days in the ‘9s, there were more times than I could count in which I hitchhiked 101 north, south, going from Willlets or Yukaya up to Arcada or up to Oregon or coming back down, etc. And so I would stop through Arcada and I would sleep on the Humbult State University campus if I was here and it was time to get some sleep cuz I couldn’t afford hotels back then. And speaking of Humbult State University, I lived right up here in this uh greenish colored house. Now, not that one. See, it says California Lifestyles Realy. they own that little thing right there. And so there are so many different stories tied into each other. And so I don’t want to get lost too much on all the connected stories, but uh in short, I went to university here in 2001 or no 2000, fall of 2000 to spring of 2002. And I lived in that little house fall of 2001, spring of 2002, the uh first year here, than I lived in an apartment right next to the campus. And so I’ve shown uh more of the town and the Humbult State University campus, etc. in another video. So not going to uh stop here. I’m just going to show you the uh little central square. Kind of the hippie homeless vagabond gathering point and events can happen here. I was here last summer when there was a um fair or festival or something going on. It was all full of different uh food stands and selling stuff. Here is the Arcada movie theater. And then you head up the hill here and uh the Wild Berries health food store. So, Wild Berries, uh, marketplace, health food store. Good stuff there. And then we’re almost through town already down the hill here. And uh when I was lost in the wilderness in the Marble Mountains, when I went backpacking there solo in September 2016, my vision while lost was Hey, Wan Burrito. Hey, Juwan burrito. Hey burrito. envisioning myself getting out of the wilderness, getting back to Arcada, and eating a burrito at Hiwan, which is right up here on the right. It is in fact called Hwan Burritos. And it happened that day that I finally got out of there. I hitchhiked into Arcada and had a Hwan burrito. and very much enjoyed it. All right, so Calpaly Humble, they changed the uh name from Humble State University to make it sound more fancy or whatever. 101 North. So now from here, nothing much happening except for one cool stop between here and Crescent City. So a quick memory of this campground. I met up with someone here that a few of you might know about. another uh YouTube travel vlogger, Rosie Gabrielle. So, uh this was right before my Lost in the Wilderness truck breaking down experience in September 2016. My brother had just given me his used Mazda pickup truck in Oregon where he was living. I uh drove down to California to visit family down here and I forget the exact uh circumstances as far as getting in touch with Rosie, but we’d just kind of generally been corresponding or friends on Facebook and somehow I knew that she was like driving down this way coming down from Canada cuz she’s Canadian. I’d never met her before, but uh our paths were going to happen to coincide down here. And so we uh met up just at that campground and you know, she had her own camping spot and we both slept in our own tents and um we just hung out I guess for the evening. I don’t even remember if we like had dinner together or what, but anyway, we just hung out and talked a bit. And then uh we met up again another time in Dubai. She happened to be there for a travel conference and I was in Dubai just coincidentally at the same time and uh just saw her briefly there as well. So two times that I met Rosie Gabrielle. She is definitely a very very adventurous motorcycle traveling lady. And right here is where I plan to stop at some big statues. Boom. Paul Bunan and Babe the Blue Ox. Look at that. So, this is bizarre. Why are there almost no cars here? The last time that I was here, the parking lot was just absolutely packed. It’s, you know, sort of a little late, 5:54, almost 6:00 p.m. Maybe that’s why. So, this is Trees of Mystery, and I came here with uh my bro Kristo and his son like a year and a half ago or something in the winter, I believe. So, uh, yeah, let’s hop out, take a quick closer look, and then get up to Oregon. So, the Trees of Mystery is back in there, and uh you go for a hike in the uh woods, and there is a uh cable car gondola thing that takes you up to the top of the uh hill there. And then there are a bunch of uh statues carved out of wood. and I forget what else, but it’s a whole experience. You uh go through there and you have to pay to go in and then it’s like a couple hours experience or so worth paying for. So, this was here way back uh 1980 or so, 45 years ago when I came up here with my uh aunt Chris. So, my aunt Chris uh took me on a big uh two week road trip all over the western US when I was 8 years old and we started of course in Willlets. She picked me up and uh we started driving this way. So, this was the beginning of the trip, the first day, I guess. And pretty uh monumental to experience when you’re 8 years old. I probably didn’t quite know what I was going to be seeing. Great uh photo opportunity. [Music] And look what we’ve got here. elk. Look at that. They’re basically huge deer and native to this area, man. They are big guys and gals. All right, almost to Crescent City, [Music] Elk Valley Tribal Fuel Mart and Casino. And they have reasonably priced gas. So, it’s about time to fuel up. Let’s do it. Elk Valley Tribal Fuel Mart. $371 a gallon for regular. That is so cheap for California. I was planning to wait until I got to Oregon because I could make it, but uh that’s probably about the same as the Oregon prices. It’s like 450 and over five a gallon in lots of places in California. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Hey, Heat. [Music] Hey, [Music] heat. Hey. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]

Driving north on scenic highway 101 from Ukiah in northern California to Eugene, Oregon.
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Music during the video (in order):

“Highway Blues” by Henrik Andersson
&
“This Ain’t My First Rodeo” by Bo the Drifter
&
“A Trip Around the Moon” by Unicorn Heads

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Video created by Gabriel Morris, who is the owner of all video or photo content. Filmed with a DJI Osmo Action: https://amzn.to/3gSi8rA

Gabriel is a budget traveler, outdoors enthusiast and travel writer who has been adventuring around the world since his first trip to Europe in the summer of 1990 when he was 18 years old. He is author of “Following My Thumb”, “Gabe’s Guide to Budget Travel” and several other books.

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