Mad River, California plus Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park

How many of you have ever driven the road (Rt 36) from Susanville through to Red Bluff & then onto Eureka? The road from Susanville to Red Bluff is fine – a little windy but nothing major. But then the road changes! It took us 3 hours to drive the 100 miles from Red Bluff to Mad River. Mad River is a little community way, way in the mountains. It’s official population is 35. I had to drive most of the way using gears otherwise we would have had no brakes left on the truck! Very picturesque though & if you have time, well worth it.

The place that we were delivering the pigs to was actually up a mountain above Mad River. Look at the view from their place:

Naturally running through the center of Mad River is the actual Mad River 🙂

When we got up there, I got out to see if I could make the corner. Thought I could so gave it a try! OOPS! Discovered that I was just a little too long to make the turn so had to back out. Well I tried but the driveway dipped so the trailer got stuck. Jason got some wood for me to back the trailer wheels back onto raising it up so I could get out. “No problem,” everyone thought as there was another driveway to reverse back up. So we tried that. Hah! Still too long – got up the drivewya but couldn’t get enough turn, without going over the edge, to get the trailer turned & heading back to where they wanted the pigs. Bother! So Plan #3 went into effect. They went & got their trailer & we unloaded the pigs one set at a time & took them where they needed to be. That of course made the job longer but it worked.

Now I was still facing up the hill & needed to go back down it. Where to turn? Had to reverse a little ways & then thankfully there was room to back the trailer onto some grass. We were able to clean it out there also. By the time we got back on the road we were all tired but the road to Eureka was even windier than the one to Mad River. Took us 2 hours to get to our hotel. In fact we stopped in Fortuna first to go to the bathroom & grab a McDonalds. We had not been to the bathroom since 12:30pm & it was now 7:45pm! Yes not quite sure how we all managed that long but we did 🙂

On the way from Mad River to Eureka there is Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park. Yes Mad River is in Humboldt County – the home of the Redwoods. We were not able to stop at the park as our rig is too long but did take some pics on the road. The Redwoods are awe inspiring.

I will show you more in a later post 🙂

Take care,

Liz