Travel Day, Modoc National Forest, Warner Mountain Road

Tuesday October 18, 2022 Modoc National Forest, CA.

We broke camp in the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge where we spent a good night and got onto this road, 8a, a well rocked road that we made good time on. We had about thirty miles to go on it to Cedarville where we hoped to fill up with gas.

We stopped here at this water hole to check the map and take a short break. Wispy clouds in the sky today.

Lug nuts

We drove on stopping at this roadside pull-off to check the map again. Marty suggested that maybe that old car had a lug nut I could use. I took a couple of them off but they were too large to work.

Eventually the road turned to pavement as we got closer to Cedarville.

Gas at Cedarville

We arrived and pulled up to the pumps and noticed the pumps and the place were all shut down, so no gas. That’s ok, as we have big tanks and still had enough of gas to get to a place that will have gas on highway 395, when we get there.

Surprise Valley

We came to this real lush valley with lots of ranches and farms and lots of green fields. I checked the map and it was called Surprise Valley. After driving it for a few miles the reason they called it Surprise Valley was apparent after traveling through desert lands to get to it.

We are headed south through Surprise Valley, headed for those mountains way up ahead as we want to cross over them to Highway 395 on the other side of.

Warner road

We took the Warner road up that hill to the right. It climbed up pretty fast and took us up to 72000 feet into the Modoc National Forest.

The road was graveled and in pretty good shape except for some wash board. We climbed quite a ways until we got to this flat spot where we stopped for a break, before continuing on up the mountains in the back. This road is also called County Road 42.

I heard some Sand Hill cranes and looked up to see this.

Camp spot?

Before getting back on the road Marty and I talked about maybe spending a night up in this forest and decided to do it if we found a suitable spot.

We are getting into the forest part, just up ahead. We didn’t run into anyone on this road today, nor on most of the roads we’ve been taking.

I think this view sold us on staying the night.

With the fall colors, everything looked great up here, so we took a side road to look for a camp spot.

Camp spot for the night

This one will do. We put out our chairs.

Hike

After sitting there resting up and discussing our day and plans for tomorrow I went for a little hike down this sorta road/trail which I saw on the map went down to a small creek.

I went about a half a mile and found this little creek in this pot.

Tracking app, no have

The trail had come out of those trees on the left and I’d been walking around out in the open when I had a thought, that I better be careful because that trail might not be so easy to find in the trees to make my way back. I hunted for it and did find it and marked it in my mind before continuing up around those trees to the right to come back into camp from above and if I didn’t, I could come back here to the trail to get back. I’d forgotten about the app on my phone, called GeoTracker that one can set a home point which was camp and it would track your trail all around and always show you were the camp was. I didn’t think of it and left my phone back at the van. I need to get used to using that app as I’ve had some close calls, or at least concerns about getting lost where I hike around.

I made it back to camp and we sat around enjoying the spot, satisfied we’d made a good choice by making camp here.

Sunset

Tomorrow’s plans

We need to continue making our way towards home. That means we need to be at Last Chance Creek tomorrow, where we should have been today. We had an extra day to spare so we used it up today.

We’ll continue across these mountains and hit Highway 395 where I hope to post this blog and drive down that highway for about an hour and get back into the forest for tomorrow’s camp.

Nice day.

We’ve been driving through the Modoc forest for three hours and it was a real scenic drive. We are now at highway 395 where I’m posting this and will head south on that highway for a  little over an hour and then head on back in the forest again.