Thursday May 21, 2015

An early rest day for us. We were woken up in the night, not by raccoons, but by an alarm clock going of in the room next to ours. Needless to say there was no one in the room and as it was past midnight, no one at the reception desk. We put ear plugs in and went back to sleep. I woke up at 7:30 am, feeling exhausted, although I felt as if I had slept well after the alarm incident. However, I am usually awake at 6:00 a.m. most days, so 7:30 was a little late for me. I was a little annoyed as we needed to get moving today as we had the biggest climb coming up and a long day to get to the State Park after Leggett. Plus the issue with going through the Avenue of the Giants during Memorial Day week-end.

After we went over to get our continental breakfast, Ralf asked me if I needed a rest day. I told him we couldn’t afford it – time-wise and financially we have to cut back on the motels. He took one look at me and said “you look like hell, you need a rest day”. I was going to argue with him, but I realized he was right and went back to bed. I woke up again at 11:30 a.m. I guess I needed some sleep.

The day started of as usual grey and a little foggy, by the time I got up again the sun was peaking out and the wind would have been behind us. We would have had a tail-wind to climb the hill, bugger.

I updated the blog today and Ralf went for a ride in the afternoon.

Across the road from the motel was a property that looked as if it was military land. Ralf discovered it was lumber company land.

Fort Bragg had three mills in its hey day. The last one left in 2002 leaving hundreds out of work. The City bought 95% of the land with the provision that the lumber company clean it up before the exchange. They didn’t and the land has been left.

Ralf cycled to crystal beach, but it wasn’t much to look at.

He discovered the museum with this huge slab of redwood. The height of the tree was 334 feet. It\’s estimated age is 1,753 years old.  It took a saw that was 22 feet long to cut it and it took 60 man hours to cut it down. Now that is sad, 60 hours to kill a 1,753 year old tree.

He showed it to me later, I particularly liked the timeline of this ancient tree.

Often when Ralf is out on his own, discovering the Town he will get chatting to people about their houses or businesses. He had spotted this tower from the road and discovered it was part of a Bed and Breakfast.

The owner who was working in the garden invited him in to view the tower which was an old water tower and has been converted into rooms for the B&B.

Of course, when Ralf spotted the old rail yard he had to go in and investigate.

The Skunk Rail Company is hoping to extend their line to Fort Bragg in the near future. It was called the skunk rail, because of the mixtures of coal for the locomotive and gas that they used to heat the carriages smelled so bad that the surrounding landowners knew when the train was coming because of the smell it created.

After dinner, we went for a walk around the Town together and had some ice-cream.  The historic downtown of Fort Bragg is quite nice.  If you stay on the main road you miss the nice old buildings of the downtown.  This is on the Main Street.