Eureka & Arcata, California and Medford, Grants Pass, and Crater Lake, Oregon

In the late 1960s, probably 1967, Dad with Mom drove just the three of us--Mike, Tom, and Joe--to San Francisco then to Eureka, Humboldt Bay, and Arcata where we stopped to visit a friend of his from the Marines.

Eureka, CA

While there I explored a beautiful, grass-filled ravine and a line of trees up on the opposite ridge.  I felt like I was in Heaven.  It was beautiful, green, while the ocean cooled the dryer parts of the coastline.  And as a kid's wont, I believed it to be my own private world.  I owned none of it, of course, but at the time no one could have convinced me otherwise.  I was a newly christened ambassador of the town, touting its virtues to anyone who would listen.  But I just loved that city.  It was wealthy.  It was a coastal town.  It was in northern California. Years later when I was in high school it became my inspiration for being a forest ranger.  I applied to Humboldt University.  I wanted to be in the woods and be an adventuresome woodsman.

From Eureka we continued north into Oregon.  I enjoyed passing through Crescent City, the last city in California before entering Oregon.  That city too was aptly named.  We stopped in Medford, Oregon and met another one of Dad's friends from the Marines.  This guy owned a supermarket.  It could have been ShopRite but I can't say for sure.  I walked into the store with Dad, and his friend walked us through the store, collecting grapes and other fruits for us as we wove through the produce section to the manager's office in the back.  I loved how Dad knew lots of people of influence and moderate wealth.  I wonder if he didn't feel like he somehow missed out on opportunities with them by taking his job in the County.

From Medford, Dad drove us to a motel built along the banks of the Rogue River.  From the rear window of our motel that was up on the banks, we watched the Rogue River flow west.  There is the city of Rogue River and there is the river called Rogue River that flows out of Crater Lake to the Pacific Ocean.  Salmon run up that river.  Our motel was in Grants Pass.

The view above of the Rogue River (Oregon) is in alignment with what I saw looking out our motel window.  We could have been a mile from this washed out bridge.  But we were stationed at a point along the river that was quite mild.  I found myself asking "Why would they call this a 'rogue' river?"  Too funny.  This section of the river is in Grants Pass.  

I know we passed through Grants Pass and have remembered the city all my life, in part, because I was a minor Civil War and history buff.  I will never forget the time that Dad walked us into The Grant Hotel in San Diego, where I saw lots of elderly men, gentlemen really enjoying toast, jam, coffee, and the morning paper. I loved all the dark wood of that hotel, and the decor was right out of the pre-war era.

Following our stay in Grants Pass along the Rogue River, Dad drove us northeast to Crater Lake.

Now that place lived up to its name.  It was a huge crater in the earth.  The water was a deep blue, perhaps the bluest I had seen at that time in my life.  We didn't stay at a Crater Lake motel.  Instead, we drove north and found a rustic motel recessed off the road.  It was not quite a log cabin but it was a cabin, an old cabin exactly what we had imagined a rustic life would be.  There was a medium sized river behind the cabin.  The place didn't have a pool. We were used to pools.  It was how we got our exercise on road trips.  But no pool.  So my brothers and I improvised.  We waded into the river and clung to large boulders while the minor rapids rushed over us.  It was refreshing.  It was a great scene that would have made Huck Finn jealous.