Crossing the Old Humboldt Rd., Four Wheel Drive Required

Wednesday October 5, 2022 Old Humboldt Rd. Northern CA.

Moving out

We left our camp on the Last Chance Creek and continued up the road just before noon today. The road went along the creek so we continued to explore along it.

Map check

We stopped on this bridge crossing Last Chance Creek. All that water is there because the beaver dammed it up.

Wash boarded

We were headed out of the forest towards Highway 395, but weren’t real sure what roads to take to accomplish that so we checked the maps often. This was the main road out that we followed. A bit wash boarded, but otherwise a pretty good road.

Burned

Some of it wasn’t quite as good, but all passible. A big forest fire went through here about a year ago.

Pavement

We finally came out on a paved road. We checked our maps and had to determine which way to go to get out of the forest and continued on.

The paved road was good and we made good time and we picked the right road to get out.

Where’s gas

Just before we got to the end of this road where it met highway 395, I saw a guy in his yard and stopped to ask where gas was up this way. We lucked out as there was a gas station at the end of this road where it hits 395

We had lots of gas but wanted to top up before going out into the desert in Nevada, so we stopped and took care of that. Happiness for exploring is a full tank of gas.

Headed East

We crossed over 395 and went out this road headed east. Mostly farm land.

Old Humboldt Rd.

We were looking for a road that went over the hills we needed to take to connect to the road we wanted to take north into Nevada and had to stop for a map check a couple of times but we found it. This was a road the old timers used when they first moved into this area from the east in the 1800s.

It wasn’t too bad at the start but it got much better shortly.

Four wheel time

Marty says it’s time to turn in the hubs for four wheel drive and we needed it. The road got very rocky. We had to poke along in our lowest gears for a long ways. The road climbed the hill going over a pass.

With a lot of crash banging we made it to the top of the hill.

Hard gate

We had to go through this gate. It was wired too tight and I could barely open it and I had to go back and help Marty close it.

The road was still rocky as we started down the other side of the pass.

Moving along down the road I see Marty stop in back of me.

Band aids

Marty radioed he had to stop to get a band aid on some cuts on his arm his steering wheel gave him when he hit a rock that spun it out of his hands. He stopped to take care of that.

Looking for camp

It was after 4 so we started looking for a camp to spend the night. We spotted a wild game watering tank and pulled in there to camp for the night.

Marty is setting his game camera there to see if we can get any pictures during the night.

After that we settled into this camp for the night. We sat around in our chairs until it started to get dark.

We’ll continue down that road tomorrow and continue heading North through the desert roads.

Nice day.