I can’t believe I don’t have any pictures of this, because it was a heck of a story! We made our way toward the California coast, with an eye to Glass Beach, but stopped short of the coast at a Cal Fire Demonstration Forest, which was a “first come first serve” (FCFS) campground. It was getting pretty late in the day and we felt we lucked out when we got what appeared to be the last spot. We dropped our money in the ironbot and pinned our stub to the post next to the spot.
Then I looked around and realized all spots had picnic tables and fire rings and ours had… nothing. Just enough space to park the van. Huh. I looked down the hill behind our spot marker post and there was an old school van down there, bins of laundry and laundry strung across a line to dry. Clearly those people had been here awhile. And I realized that was likely the actual site. Oh well. We fit, so we sit.
Those people down the hill were a couple who very much started fighting. And they seemed to be friends with a guy in the middle of the campground who had accumulated a huge pile of firewood. We tried to ignore the shouting and swearing and befriended a couple of women tent camping across from us. They cooked up some fantastic nachos they shared with us as night fell.
As it got later, the guy in the middle turned on some high powered lights on tripods and had them aimed right at the women’s tents. KT asked if he could turn them off or redirect them elsewhere, and why did he need such high powered lights anyway? “Critters!” Mmmkay. After a lot of back and forth, he finally slightly turned the lights away from the tent.
…And then fired up a gas powered chainsaw. At 11pm!! It was so creepy and weird. So best guess is these people were squatting in the campground beyond the 14 days they were allowed and trying to scare off other visitors. I don’t think that campground had regular ranger patrols. Anyway, we locked ourselves in the van for the night and weren’t chopped up by a chainsaw. The next morning we made our way to Fort Bragg and Glass Beach where we scoured for remnants of glass from a long-gone glass factory.
A large-scale model train was on exhibit nearby and KT had his phone “ride the train” through while taking a video. Neat!
We also walked through town and stopped at a cute little gallery. The proprietor ran workshops to create these air plants (air lily?) hanging from a ball of twine. We bought one as our first van plant. It added quite a nice feel of homey-ness.
I’m a lighthouse person (long history there!), so we also stopped at a lighthouse before making the final leg home. Except I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet, even though it was right there. So we camped one more night in an RV park on the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway 1). All the state park campgrounds were full. So I think that was when I decided RV parks were like parking lots for RVs and I was not a fan. No good ambiance!
