Just+Add+Water

The following was originally published August 4, 2008 at http://travelingsimply.blogspot.com/2008/08/just-add-water.html While the Eel River may sound not so yummy, we found that it had several choice swimming holes. Dana spent a couple hours in the river-rock smooth bottomed Eel at Benbow Lake State Recreation Area - where we were charged $6 to camp.

After another hilly day, we were still along the Eel and found an amazing sandy beach swimming hole, with the requisite quarry-like rock wall for cliff jumping. Tom got in on that (but not from as high as the local teens) and both kids jumped in from maybe 10 feet up. Laural just swam until the sun went down behind the cliffs and then we treked back up to the hiker-biker camp (where there was lots of company, 5 other folks also traveling the coast).

The kids have also swum at the Eureka KOA (handy to have them in their swimsuits while we laundered everything else), and gotten completely soaked in the Pacific waves. Those crashers are loud and taller than they are, so it has deterred them actually swimming.

We're applying lots of sunscreen, have passed the 700 miles cycled mark, and make sure we add water to the itinerary almost every day. Noah says he updated his audio blogs, and next computer time will figure out how to organize them!