River

Days 26-28: Nevada City / Yuba River CA

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Prior to mapping out our trip, we had hopes of visiting San Francisco and Yosemite, but – holy long distances Batman – both of those were much farther from our first California campsite than you’d think. Timewise, if we wanted to get home by the end of six weeks, we needed to head east by this point in the journey. We charted out different possibilities, prioritizing highly rated campsites near points of interest. They also needed to be en route to one of the major West-East interstates. That is how we hit on Nevada City, CA. In all honesty, I had never heard of Nevada City. (My apologies to residents of that fine town, or uh, city?) However, there was a state park that got a lot of high ratings nearby. The town itself was picturesque. And there was a highly rated campground. Plus, Route 80 was not to far from this town.

If you know me, you’ll know I hate not being able to get directly from point a to point b, and unfortunately, in order to connect to the route that would take us southeast to Nevada City, CA, we had to go north into Oregon again.

Right after we left our campsite in the Redwoods we found this gem of a “graffitied” road sign.

As we moved Northeast towards Oregon again, the wet, redwood-laden coastline quickly changed into sun-baked, high mountains and plains dotted with scrubby evergreen trees and bushes. It was hot and dry, and our understanding was that it had been that way for a while. It was obvious how fire-prone this area was, just passing through.

If you are from out of state and haven’t driven into CA in the recent past, you need to know that the odds are high you’ll face a traffic slowdown upon entry, while waiting to get your vehicle inspected for invasive pests and contraband produce. In fact in the first crossing a few days back, this official dude pulled us over and spent ten minutes on his back checking the undercarriage of our entire truck and trailer. He excitedly produced a spider pod in a test tube for us, which he said he wasn’t sure was anything, and gave us a handout about invasives and we were on our way. This second go-round coming back into CA, however, we got waved through more quickly. (Must have been close to lunch break.)

It was a long drive to Nevada City from the border. The hot, dry conditions continued throughout the whole of the day.  A large swath of Mount Shasta was on fire as we passed it on our left as we moved southeast. (We had a lot of time to look because traffic was at a standstill due to construction.)

About thirty minutes out from Chico, I said to the family “Hey, I think this is a college town coming up. There’s probably great takeout food. Why don’t you all decide on a place, and order in advance by phone? It will be ready by the time we get to town.” Thirty minutes later, and no consensus on food (i.e. four hangry people does not a productive conversation make). We wound up buying fast food, which nobody wanted. The best laid plans and all that. When people ask me how we got along so well, I remember moments like this.

The road to Chico took us through miles and miles of citrus and plum (for prunes) trees. Limes, lemons, and mandarins on mostly level ground as far as the eye could see. There were also quite a bit of other types of farms.

Farms and flatlands turned into mountains, and eventually we arrived at Inn Town Campground (highly recommend) after dark. We had time to pull in and catch a tv show before bed, so we missed how absolutely charming and interesting the town of Nevada City was that night. We were really pleased to find a lot of safety protocols in place at this campground for Covid, which we appreciated. The staff was really helpful and friendly. It was beautifully landscaped underneath the shade of many extremely tall evergreen trees, with immaculate facilities.

In the morning we trekked out route 49, along craggy cliffs – again pocked with scrubby trees and evidence of forest fires – towards Yuba River State Park. There was a really cool original Western Union building in a historic gold-rush-era “town” just before we descended to the parking lot for the park. Parking was super cheap and after a short hike, we staked out a small bit of rocky ground on the river’s edge. It was VERY crowded. But there was enough space to spread out and not bump into anyone.

We enjoyed ourselves so much here. The river itself was the perfect temperature, and was almost a teal color. There were tons of rocks that you could jump into the water from and land in deep holes carved by river eddies. We swam upstream and found a low-grade waterfall that you could slide down (because of the slippery, algae-covered rocks). Swimming against the current coming off this waterfall was an unexpectedly fun work-out.

After hours of swimming, we were starving, and wound up eating in down-town Nevada City. Sadly the town was closing up as we were walking the streets, but we hit up a couple of fantastic, artsy, touristy shops before heading back to our home at Inn Town.

Days 14-16: Hells Canyon ID

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We already thought from the – you know – name of the place, that it might be hot near Hells Canyon. And it was. The high on the only full day we were there was 105. However, we were told that in the days up until we arrived, the temperatures hit 120. We were lucky. Heh heh.

In truth, we stayed in Clarkston, Washington, across from Lewiston, Idaho. (Everything’s named after these guys out here.) This was one of the places we decided to let Chris have time to work. There was a nice, air conditioned, and empty work room at our campsite. Although our trailer is air conditioned, it can’t quite get the RV cooler than 85 degrees in excessive heat with no tree cover. Lucky for the kids, they were already over their mild versions of Chris’ cold so they were up for any activity I felt we could safely do (in Covid-era). The choice was fairly easy. At the docks a few yards from our site, there was a jet boat company who did tours of Hells Canyon with lunch included.

The company we chose for our adventure was called Snakedancer. I wish I remember our guide and his co-worker’s name because they were fantastic. We traveled up the Snake River, which started with denser homes along a wide green-brown river and low-slung cliffs that very quickly gave way to outcroppings of a handful of water-side homes only reachable by boat or – in rare instances – from dirt roads that disappeared over much higher cliffs. The latter houses were mostly off-grid with water tanks above them, generators kept in buildings that looked like outhouses, and with mail arriving via a boat once a week on Wednesdays.

The river was crowded with July 3rd revelers taking journeys upstream to stop on their own stretch of any number of beaches that were exposed along the river due to the low water levels. They set up little day camps and were swimming, boating, and floating on the waters edge as we zoomed by. Leaving commentary around this aside, I’m going to just note that greater than half of the homes and boats we saw in the more remote areas had Trump signs flying on them.

There were plenty of wild animals to see along the river, like bald eagles, mountain rams and elk. We also saw an abandoned mining operation. At the confluence with the Salmon River, the source of the brown in the water was revealed. It was pouring out of the Salmon, also known as the River of No Return, because any supply boats that traveled this river could never make the return trip on the rapids without suffering too much damage. Our guide said that somewhere up the Salmon there might have been a mudslide. Past this point, the Snake River was a pretty deep green-blue color.

Around lunchtime we hit the US National Forest’s Cache Creek Ranch in Oregon, just past the border with Washington. Idaho was still on the opposite shore. Any boats travelling past this point are required to pull over to the dock and get their Hells Canyon permits checked. We stopped long enough to eat a delicious lunch that the tour company provided and had a lovely conversation with some fellow travelers from Northern California. Then we got into the boats and continued up-river until we reached Dug Bar, at which point we turned around. This area had a pretty heart-breaking indigenous people’s history: https://www.nps.gov/nepe/learn/historyculture/dug-bar-history.htm.

On the way back, we were able to see more wildlife at the water’s edge. At one point, we pulled off to the side of the river and went swimming. Matthew and Izzy were the first to ask if they could dive off the back of the boat, since the drop-off to deep water was pretty steep and it was relatively safe. After we loaded back onto the boat, we also encountered some multi-day raft tourists and kayakers. It was interesting to see how all of the boats, including ours, were careful to avoid creating wakes anywhere near non-motor boats and swimmers. Only once did we see a boat exhibiting poor water safety where smaller craft were concerned. Otherwise, despite it being a fairly crowded day, everyone co-existed well on the river. Finally, our guide pulled us up alongside some rocks with petroglyphs dating back thousands of years, situated near a ranch run by the Nature Conservancy. By this point, both kids were wiped and one was napping on my lap. (And if you have a teen you’ll know how absolutely precious this moment was to me.)

We got back in the afternoon and caught up with Chris on our days. Then we took a little drive to show him some of the scenery we enjoyed along the river, while eating carry-out dinner.