Sasquatch for Lunch

Why Adventure is Sometimes Hard to Swallow

Posted by Kathy on May 21, 2010 in Blog | 0 comments

It would be a perfect place for a terrorist to hide out. Ted Kaczynski (the Unibomber) would love it here. You may be asking me, why we were there in the first place?  Well, for years, Pat has been telling me about the Trinity River area, and how beautiful it was there. Well, the river was beautiful, but too high to fish or raft. It had swollen it’s banks and swallowed trees on the shorelines.

We stayed our first night at Del Loma RV park.  We almost didn’t drive in. Among their many amenities, they sold goats. HELLO! Since there wasn’t any other options, I talked Pat into one night. We had a lovely spot by the river, which was wonderful.  The park was empty except for one other couple, who didn’t come out much.

We left the next morning and traveled up to a park that Camping world described with a glowing rating system. We provisioned in Weaverville, paying top dollar for bananas at TOPS Foods. We drove to the glorious, Trinity Lake Resort at Pine cove. It was a dark, heavily treed and the lake was no place in sight. We really couldn’t imagine who would want to camp there. A guy in camo burning something waved to us as we left. Probably burning evidence of some kind.

So we decided to hit the road going the other direction towards the coastline.  All I can say is I don’t know what the Californians have been doing with their money, but they haven’t  spent it on the road systems.  This highway, if you can call it that, was the hairiest thing I have ever been on. It was like Lombard St (Americas crookest street) with out San Francisco.  The difference was we were driving a 14 ft truck with a 26ft trailer behind it. We would go along for several miles of hairpin turns, and then we would see a sign that “road narrows” or “rough road ahead” or “10% grade ahead.”  I kept looking for the sign that said, “Road ends.” There were times I thought we were never getting out of there.”

Finally, we came to a small town. I don’t know if I can adequately describe what I saw, but here goes.  They were half human, half Sasquatch.  I’m not being snarky, or rude here because if you saw them you would agree. They looked at though they had never run a comb through there hair and had slept in their clothes for several months. They were mostly men, with one woman.  She was filling propane tanks. I have never seen people look quite so feral.  I had to fight the urge to gawk. At some point my heart told me it was not polite and I turned away. On the way out of the little town I saw a muddy turnout filled with about 7 or 8 park trailers, windows taped and missing tires, rusty and fragile, but they were homes to children non the less. I saw a few small faces in doors and windows looking out.  I began trying to imagine what it would be like to live here.  Dark, was all I could think of, dark and hopeless.  Not very profound, but reality sometimes robs me of poetry. I felt like I had just left a Stephen King novel.

When I think about what I have learned from this adventure so far is that our vision is obscured by what we think we know of the world.  The thing about travel is that it blows that up and retools it.  God is in there somewhere too.  My world is slightly bigger today, but more uneasy—a little like eating Sasquatch for lunch.