Chapter Six: Settling in on Sunday
Even the best-planned vacation can go awry. Of course, this trip did not start out as a vacation. Vince worked as a realtor full-time. I worked part-time in my position with the California Council for the Social Studies.
I hope you will come away from this series with an appreciation for the role of vacation mishaps that slow you down and help you enjoy the trip. Nothing is perfect, especially when traveling, but there is always something to learn and enjoy along the way.
This series was edited in 2024. As a new blogger in 2013, I wrote all ten posts in the third person. My pictures had never been processed, and some were not compelling. It had great bones, and I wanted to preserve the story as a travelogue.
The news was that our truck wouldn’t be ready until Saturday. Like the fog lifting in the morning sun, Vince relaxed and we both began to enjoy a real vacation.
“What should we do today?” I asked.
He knew the area better than I did. His brother was one of the 82,000 alumni who attended Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, located 50 miles south of our location in Klamath.
“I’m happy just hanging around here for a while. Look at these pictures I took this morning.”
Vince took out his cell phone and shared some gorgeous sunrise pictures with fog clinging to the redwoods on the hill and sun sparkling on the Klamath River as it charged its way to the Pacific Ocean a half mile away.
The fishing boats had either gone back to their winter homes or lay still in the docks. Water lapped rhythmically against their sides, a metronome for the chirping birds catching their breakfast.
I couldn’t argue with the natural beauty that surrounded us. Puppy Girl and I made several rounds around the RV Park.
The manager, tanned from years in the sun and missing many teeth from years of neglect, rode up on his bicycle to chat with us as a couple walked down to the dock, this time with me carrying the camera.
“Have you been here before? People stay here for months at a time. You just missed the salmon run. It slammed! This couple here,” the manager pointed to a man maneuvering his boat toward the dock, “They’ve been fishing here for years. They are both retired police officers. Gil caught his first fish in 1957.”
Even from a distance, I didn’t think Gil looked old enough to be catching fish in 1957, but I had my first and only fishing experience at age 9, so I supposed he might have started fishing at an early age. Soon, his wife joined him. I was sitting on the dock, snapping pictures of her appropriate fishing boots as she approached.
“Take a picture of where I ran into a wire. It took forever to heal, but it’s almost gone now.” The attractive blond with a ranger hat modeled for my camera.
“We’ve heard you are good at catching salmon. You just made two new best friends,” I called down to her, a flashing teasing smile as the couple revved off in their utility boat. They waved back and were gone.
“You can come here and see the little otters playing in the evening. I snapped a second too late, but he was there.”
The manager knew about our truck and didn’t want us to miss the best sights since we were going to be there for a while. He pulled out a topical map and started mapping out our day.
“You two should go up to the lookout point, right over there on the north side of the Klamath. You can see the mouth of the river and the jetty where all the fishermen just catch salmon from the dock. Then, if you go across the Golden Bear Bridge, you can go up the other side. Those are nice drives. Have you been to the drive-through tree? That makes a great picture.”
After he left, Vince joined me on the dock but soon tired of watching me take pictures of the seaweed decorating the dock’s underbelly, He headed back to the chairs that lined the shore.
“Don’t drop your camera!” he called as he left me sprawled face down, my camera pointed into the water.
I had already dropped my camera, with its brand-new lens, on the ground, when I took it off the tripod for the first time. I broke another lens trying to climb up on a wall and misjudged the step, smashing it on the rock wall. Another lens I broke when I fell out of my car that I had forgotten to put in park. It was rolling down a hill with a 78-year-old man in the passenger seat. But that’s a story for another day.
We took a short walk, met a biker, took some more pictures, and then headed out to see the famous Mystery Trees.
Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
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