Where the Heck is Willits, California

It is in fact, south of Eureka on US 101 at the southern end of the Redwood Highway.  We arrived here around 1430 on Saturday after a leisurely and very scenic 150 mile drive south from Eureka.  It was a good drive with four lane highway most of the way and only short stretches of two lane and winding highway. It has a Safeway with cheap gas, and a Starbucks for Pamela, so what else is needed?

For those of you wondering how we are doing towing this big rig, the GMC truck seems to handle the weight just fine, but we really slow down for the hills.  We are going about the same speed as the big semi trucks on the long grades.  We have had some big motorhomes towing cars pass us as we were in the slow lane.  Gas mileage right now is averaging about 8.3 mpg overall.  Mileage goes up to a whopping 11 or 12 mpg when we have the Fiver un-hitched.

We have checked in to the KOA at Willits, which is on the Fort Bragg highway to the California Coast.  That is our plan for tomorrow, to spend the day going over to the Mendicino Coast and seeing the sights.  The town of Mendicino is where the Murder, She Wrote television series was filmed.  Downeast Maine filmed on the California Coast--go figure,.

Pamela with "Slide Stick"

We got an idea from Pamela's brother Seth to use a yard stick to measure how far out the Fiver slides jut out into the camp space.  We used it at the KOA here in Willits, as Pamela shows above.  She is also wearing a fashionable yellow FRS radio around her neck which we use to talk to each other as we park our Fiver.

The weather hit around 62 degrees today, which is trending in the right direction.  We are looking forward to weather in the 70's as we head south.  Since we arrived at our campground before dark, and it was not raining, we had our first barbecue on our new Coleman grill.  We grilled lamb shanks with mustard sauce and they were great!  We also polished off a bottle of champagne before and with dinner.  Did we mention that we are traveling with a case of Italian champagne?  Well we are.

Grilled Lamb on the BBQ

Tomorrow is supposed to be partly sunny, so we are looking forward to our trip to the California Coast.  Thank you to all who have left comments or sent messages--it is good to know that someone out there is reading this stuff.

Neil and Pamela