Stop 38: Happy Camp, CA

Our trip to the Klamath River took us past the Northwest face of Mt. Shasta.

After hitting I-5 in Weed, we headed North to Yreka and then West along the Klamath River.

We had a reservation at an RV park in Seiad Valley. Unfortunately, for the first time in our experience, they had mishandled the reservation. I'm sure that they believed that we had made one but that doesn't do much good when there's no room at the inn.

We needed to find a new park on the fly. Not easy when the entire Klamath River Region seems to not have cell service and our Good Sam book has no entries at all for the region. Before making the reservation in Seiad Valley, I had tried a place in Happy Camp only to be told that they were full. That was over a month ago so we decided to head there to see if something had opened up. Fortunately, they did have one very tight back-in space.

The excitement was just starting. The people next to us had their awning all the way out and, I guess, kept it out to keep us from claiming any of their space (I guess that I can't blame them for that). The sure watched us closely to make sure that we didn't damage their awning. We did get into the space and had about 8" between our trailer and their awning - fine so far.

There is a jack on the front of the tongue that lifts the trailer off the hitch and is then adjusted to level the trailer from front to back. Needless to say, it carries a lot of weight. We are on grass at this site and there must have been a gopher hole passing close to where we put down the jack. The second that the tongue lifted off of the hitch, the jack dropped into the hole and the front of the trailer shifted 8" towards our neighbors. The corner of the trailer was actually touching their awning.

No damage had been done as yet but there was no way to remedy the situation unless they were to bring their awning in. They did and we were able to hitch back up and reposition the trailer a little bit farther over.

We have about 3' between the door side of the trailer and the white picket fence. We got the 4 corner jacks down just as quickly as we possible could before anything else could shift.

I didn't mention the weather. The days before we got here were hovering around 107° and it was supposed to be close to that when we arrived. Instead, it was cloudy and drizzly and 75°, a welcome change after the past few days. On our full day here, it was clear and closer to 100° but the brief respite was nice.

For lunch on our full day here, we headed back to Seiad Valley to a restaurant that we'd heard about. When I'd made my original "reservation", the woman that I talked to mentioned that the pancakes at this place had been featured on Guy Fieri's "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" TV show. Between here reservation skills and her restaurant recommendation skills, that woman is batting 1000.

The place was on TV and it certainly is a dive. In 2003, the restaurant ranked 3rd in a Travel Chanel program called "Best Places to Pig Out". The feature something called the "Pancake Challenge" - 5 huge pancakes that are free if you can finish them in 2 hours. If they cleaned the restaurant for the 2003 taping, that's probably the last time that it was cleaned. We wondered if the health department even knows of their existence.

Sasquatch across the street from our park (The Big Foot RV Park).

In spite of the heat, we took an afternoon walk along the Klamath. We'd talked about going fishing but that just seemed nuts in the heat.

 Tomorrow, we're off to Redcrest, CA (The Avenue of the Giants).

-JC-