We wake up, take down camp, make breakfast and then hit the trail to return to the RV. It’s a lovely brisk, sunny morning. The hike back is a cinch (it feels way easier than it did on the way in the day before yesterday, but then again we are rested and refreshed) and we love seeing Wapama falls from a different direction.

Falls in the distance, further along the trail

Back at the RV, we load the motorcycle (one of the rangers stops by and tells us that she loves our set-up), make quick salads for lunch, and change into clothes that don’t smell because we’ve been wearing the same ones for about 5 days now. We decide to drive as far as we can today toward Redding, CA where we will be finding an RV campground and setting up a centralized base in order to visit both Redwoods National Park and Lassen Volcanic National Park without having to drive the RV to both places. The parks are in opposite directions and we want to conserve our precious RV gas as much as possible and take the motorcycle instead.

Down the mountains on winding, tiny roads, it takes us about 4 hours to make it to the interstate. We are both starving, have nothing but a bit of lettuce in the fridge, and breakfast sounds good so we stop at Denny’s for dinner. We still have the unwashed camping stench wafting off of us, so Denny’s seems like an appropriate place to dine as we shouldn’t be bringing the ambiance down too much. Dinner really hits the spot! Back on the road and a few miles away we find a rest area and stop for some much needed showers. We unpack our backpacks while the water is heating. Both clean and feeling refreshed, we hit the road again until about 10pm when we find another rest area to pull over in for the night. We’re both beat and head to bed immediately.