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.creek1

 

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.road2

 

Burned

Some of it wasn’t quite as good, but all passible. A big forest fire went through here about a year ago.road3

 

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.pavement4

 

The paved road was good and we made good time and we picked the right road to get out.road5

 

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.road6

 

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. road7

 

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.road8

 

With a lot of crash banging we made it to the top of the hill.hilltop9

 

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.gate10

 

The road was still rocky as we started down the other side of the pass.road11

 

Moving along down the road I see Marty stop in back of me.vans12

 

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.van13

 

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.tank14

 

After that we settled into this camp for the night. We sat around in our chairs until it started to get dark.camp15

 

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

Nice day.

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Exploring the Last Chance Creek Area In Northern CA.

Tuesday October 4, 2022 Last Chance Creek, Northern CA.

Posted two blogs today. The first one is below this one if you want to read in order.

Explore day

This is where we woke this morning overlooking a beaver pond.camp1

 

Fishing

Marty decided he’d try some fishing so he got out his stuff and put it together to try his luck, he wasn’t sure there were any fish in the beaver pond.marty2

 

Marty fishing away.fishing3

 

Caught one

In a short time he was surprised he had a decent size eating fish on.fish4

 

He decided to have it for dinner and cleaned it when it slipped out of his hand and back into the water. He was able to get it to shore with the tip of his fishing pole.dinner5

 

Sitting around camp

That’s what we did, just sat around shooting the bull about old times and making plans to explore this area.

It would have been easy just sitting there all day, so I finally said we need to be on the road exploring by one. We make it by 12:30.

We were interested in the creek so we drove down any road we could find off the main road and explored, looking for camp spots and just looking around trying to check out the cheek.

Down this one

This is the first road we checked out headed towards the creek.road6

 

It went on down through here to the creek but there was no camp spot.view7

 

Map check

We drove up the main road  looking for stuff and stopped here to have a look at the maps. There were a lot of big meadows in this area that the creek ran down through.vans8

 

Dead end road

This road looked promising so we took it to this spot where it was blocked just ahead and no near by the creek.road9

 

Break spot

We got turned around and I said to Marty we’ll stop for a break on the way out on this road in the shade under some trees and look at the map and decide what to do  next.break10

 

Tonight’s camp spot

We decided to go on back to the same place we’d camped and, well, camp.

It was only a few miles back up the road so we did that.

A walk along the creek

While Marty was fixing his fish for dinner I went for a walk down along the edge of the creek to have a look around.

The first part of the walk, there were lot’s of beaver dams backing up the water until I got to this one. It was about six feet high, but below it there were no more dams for awhile so there was less water.dam11

 

Crawfish area

We didn’t catch a single crawfish by our camp in the beaver pond last night. But this area below the last beaver dam is more what we were looking for to camp by to catch them. The water is only about a foot deep with  lots of small rocks on it’s bottom.creek12

 

Marty had camped up here years ago and said the place he camped was just full of the little critters, but he can’t remember just where that spot was.

We just have to find a camp spot by the creek that has these same conditions which we will try to find tomorrow during our exploring and continuing on up the road.

I walked down the creek to here to this open area then turned back and headed to camp.view13

 

I stopped to look at this last beaver pond that had a six foot high dam. Lots of water.dam14

 

I gave Marty a report of my walk and he said his fish was cooked to perfection.

Day’s end

We sat around our camp here until just before dark and called it a nice day of exploring.camp

 

Nice day.

We are crossing into Nevada in a bit.

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