August 12, 2017
Day 40 Elk Prairie Camp Ground: Strangers To The Rescue Once Again
We slept in, knowing that we wouldn’t be on the bikes on this day. It had rained overnight and we noticed that, just as our pal Scot up in Champoeg had mentioned, the opening for our tent didn’t keep water out very well. We have a tarp, so pulled that out and strung it up – we’ll see how it works tonight.
After breakfast (oatmeal today) and a nice cup of coffee, we packed a lunch and some water to take along our our hike. We stopped in at the Ranger office to make sure we knew which trail to take. She told us that the trail was 4.9 miles to get to the canyon and then .6 around. The hike was judged to be intermediate and she mentioned that you had to watch for roots on the trail. Ok, we said, for some reason not really thinking that 4.9 miles out meant 4.9 miles back – how long could that take us? A few hours? We had all afternoon – no problem!
We started out strong, really enjoying the beauty of the forest and the intense silence once we got away from the trail head. You could almost hear the trees talking to you and telling you their story. It was amazing and brilliant and we really, really enjoyed it – for the first half.
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After a while (a long, long while), we started to wonder about our decision to go this far, but being just a little stubborn, we decided that we were going to push on to the end.
Further and further we went and the longer we went on, the more tired we became. I tired not to think about the return journey, but as we neared the end, I really didn’t think I would be able to come back this way. It was really tough, you had to watch every step and the root system that keeps these amazing trees so strong worked to make our every step difficult.
We finally reached Fern Canyon, only to find that it can be reached by a roadway and so is a full-on tourist spot with tons of people clamouring all over. After the intense silence of the forest, it was a rude awakening. We walked up for a bit and took some pictures, but really, it was not the magical place that we had been in – bummer!
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Not sure what to do, we walked out past the parking lot where the forest meets the beach and looked for a spot to eat our lunch and decide what to do. I was all for hitchhiking back with someone leaving the parking lot, but Jim wasn’t quite sold on the idea. As we looked for a spot to eat, we saw more elk! This part of the herd looked like the head male with a group of females. We had heard that the elk were rutting now, so probably this guy was protecting his group from all those young males. It was cool to sit and watch them as we ate.
After lunch, we came to the decision to walk back along the roadway and pick up another trail back to the campground further along. It would mean a longer walk, but at least we wouldn’t be slogging through the trees.
We started out and it wasn’t too bad. Kind of pleasant, actually. We saw some interesting stratigraphy along the way and were able to walk at a normal pace.
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However, the walk went on and on and on. Many cars passed us and no one stopped to ask if we needed help. I’m guessing that on that part of the road people assumed we were headed back to our car or to another part of the park, so yea, we walked and they drove by.
Finally, we reached the outskirts of the park and started up a narrow, winding road that would (in a mile or two!) lead to the trail that would take us (in another 2 miles!) back to our campground. We were resigned to not getting back until 6 or 7 by this time. Ugh! What a long day! Why did we do this to ourselves? Why had we not thought through the decision to go on the hike? Why hadn’t we just turned around and come back? We really need to be more careful when making decisions about things we don’t know about, but there was no pointing fingers, we both assumed responsibility for our dumb dumb decision and just trudged on.
And then, finally, finally, someone stopped. It was an SUV and looked pretty full of a whole family, but they stopped anyways and asked if we needed help. Oh, my goodness! You cannot ever know how totally relieved we were! “YES!” we said, we sure could use some help! With that, the Kouzmanoffs (Alex, Kristin and their 3 children) become the heros of our day! Kristin squished into the back and Jim and I jumped in. They were headed back to LA and would have been going in the opposite direction as us once they reached the highway, but they offered to go so far out of their way to take us back to the campground and we gratefully accepted. As it turned out, the three children had just completed their booklets to become California Park Junior Rangers and had been wanting to get to another park before closing so they could get their badges. By stopping to help us, they wouldn't make the park they had been aiming for, but they were able to get them at our park – how great was that! We can never thank Alex, Kristin and their wonderful children enough for stopping to help us. Kindness shown to strangers is what makes us all better people. We have been shown so much kindness on this journey so far and it lifts us up and makes this so much more than a bike trip. Really, this is a life journey and we are so very blessed to have this opportunity.
Exhausted but happy, we returned to our campsite to enjoy one more night in the magical peaceful atmosphere at Elk Prairie. Tomorrow we are headed off to Patrick's Point State Park.
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