May 1 - Thursday
We woke up to what sounded like hundreds of singing birds. We made a cup of coffee and went out to look over our home for the next five days. Glen kept saying that he didn�t know that California was such a beautiful state.
The campground is heavily wooded with live oak, black oak, manzanita, and ponderosa pine trees. The manzanita is a scrub tree. The tree trunks are a beautiful dark red and smooth to the touch. The leaves are small and round and clustered.
Our site is on the first loop and there are two more loops that are closed for repairs. They are apparently redoing all of the water lines in the park. There are 60 sites all together in the park so it is really huge. There are pit toilets scattered throughout the park and a flush toilet unit with sinks with running water near the entrance. There are new water spigots everywhere and we have one just a few feet from our site. So far we are still the only campers in the park and there has not been any sign of the host yet.
Badger and I went for a long walk and I saw a scrub jay, mountain chickadee, pygmy nuthatch, yellow warbler and the yellow rump warbler. There are a lot more birds that I am still trying to figure out their names. On our walk we discovered a truly wonderful amphitheater. It was one of the fanciest that I have seen in a park till then. There was an actual stage with a storage area in the back for equipment and seating 
for over a hundred people on paved terraces. The theater overlooked the lake, which you could see through the pine forest. Really nice. Maybe that is the reason for the higher fees. Near the amphitheater I found the biggest pine cone that I have ever seen or heard of. It was humongous and really heavy.
We put out the awning, put down our grass carpet and set up the lawn chairs. Glen grilled us a hamburger for lunch and we spent most of the afternoon sitting on our patio watching the birds. It was a beautiful sunny day and we enjoyed it immensely.
May 2 � Friday
The weather forecast is calling for rain all day so we decided to head down to Redding to see what it had to offer. First we headed over to the rv park that is adjacent to our campground. We had seen several little midget trailers pass by and we wondered if there was a convention going on so we drove up that way. There were tiny trailers everywhere as far as you could see. Glen and I had seen these trailers before and wondered about them but we had no idea how neat they were. We drove around the campground and looked them over and were pretty impressed. They were the little teardrop shaped trailers that look like they would only hold your tenting supplies but they are actually little travel trailers. They have little doors that are only three or four feet tall and through it you have a sleeping area. The curved shaped back lifts up to reveal a miniature kitchen with fridge, stove and storage. We couldn�t believe our eyes.
In Redding we found the Forest Service Information Center and went in to get pamphlets and maps. The lady there was really nice and we found out that she had lived in Alpine, Wyoming for several years and we talked to her for a long time. She was very helpful and is the one that told me about the manzanita trees. She said that people don�t like them at all and they are considered a nuisance tree because they ten to take over an area they grow in. She also said that the park host probably won�t arrive till Memorial Day. It is still considered too early for camping here and the season doesn�t really start till June. She said it gets really hot as soon as the spring rains end.
The next stop was an Auto Zone. Glen wanted to get some new brake shoes for the front of the van and he likes to buy all his car parts from Auto Zone. They are located nation wide and if Glen has to return anything from there they have it on their computers and so far they have been great to work with.
Next we went to a neat place called The California Cattle Company for lunch. Glen had a Bar-B-Q prime rib sandwich with fries and I had a Caesar Chicken pita sandwich with pasta salad. The food was really excellent and not too pricey as both sandwiches were on the lunch menu for $5.95.
If we didn�t know we were in California we might not know it by the looks of it, at least for the most part. There were a lot of art deco type d�cor on the older buildings and of course there were azaleas everywhere and palm trees in the older part of town. When we got over to the newer part of town it was just like everywhere else, though. Olive Garden, Target, Home Depot and a mall with all the regular stores. Someday the whole United States is going to look exactly the same.
We stopped by Safeway and bought some milk, creamer, pickles and oranges and then we headed home. We had been in a light rain off and on all day and were glad to get in our little house, turn up the heater and watch a little of the boob tube. We can actually get CBS, PBS and a blurry ABC.
May 3 � Saturday
It rained pretty much most of the day. We talked to Steffy a bit and then were pleasantly surprised by a phone call from Jeanne. We talked for over an hour! It was so good to hear from her.
We did a test with the Honda. Glen filled it up with gas and we ran it till it ran out of gas to see how long it would run. We had several lights, the computer, and the radio on and the heater was going on and off. We ran the coffee maker and I printed out some pictures and with all that the Honda ran for over 9 hours. We were really happy. We found that it is running better and quieter at the lower altitudes. I am still amazed that we can sit at a campground with no hookups and be able to do what we do.
May 4 � Sunday
The sun finally came out and we enjoyed spending a little time outside. I took some pictures of some wildflowers and Glen put some of the outdoor things away since we planned to leave the next day. We still pretty much had the campground to ourselves until later in the evening when two campers came in. I guess the rain kept everybody away.
We talked to Emily and found that she was going down to pick up Crystal later in the afternoon. Crystal�s mom was taken off the respirator Saturday night. She is improving but very slowly but they were just glad for any improvement at all. Emily said the name of the disease is Warner�s Disease.
May 5 � Monday
We left the Shasta Lake area and drove south to Redding and then west on Hwy 299. I took a picture of a beautiful bluebonnet when we stopped for a break.
We went up and then we went down and then up and then down. We could almost have thought we were on a roller coaster. We saw some of the most beautiful sights so far. Snow covered mountains, clear aqua rivers, giant pine forests and colorful wildflowers all along the entire route all the way until we arrived at Eureka, California.
As we left the last mountain range we eagerly started searching the horizon for the first sign of the Pacific Ocean. We finally hit the famous Hwy 101 but we were still too far inland and had to drive a little ways south to get to Eureka. As we started entering into Eureka we began to see a bay area and it reminded us a lot of the countryside down south of Houston as you get to Galveston. It was really flat and marshy looking.
We stayed overnight at the Fairgrounds on the east side of Eureka. The sights weren�t that great but we just needed a place to do our tank maintenance and email. I found the fairground site on my Trailer Life Campground Finder CD. It said there was a modem hookup. We had to go clear across the fairgrounds to find the office and I went in and asked about the modem before we even paid. It was $18 a night and yes they did have a modem hookup so we headed down to the rv sites and unhooked the trailer for the night. We did all the tank maintenance stuff and got that out of the way. Glen is really happy about our tanks. The sensors are showing really clean so we are glad that we are taking such pains with them. After the chores were out of the way we found we hade lots of channels on the tv so we vegged the rest of the night and watched rv until 10 o�clock.
The tv hours are so strange in the west. The regular prime time shows don�t start until 8 instead of 7 and the news doesn�t come on until 11. I am not sure why that is but we had found the same thing when we were at Bull River in Montana. The only station we could watch last summer was out of Spokane, Washington, which is on Pacific Time. How do people stay up that late?
Anyway, we watched Wheel of Fortune at 7:30, a really great PBS show about Yosemite National Park at 8:00 and at 9:00 two dumb CBS comedies that I can�t remember the name of and at 10:00 we watched Crossing Jordan. We were too tired to watch the news so we hit the hay.
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