Camping in Gualala

Noah and I decided to take the girls on one last camping trip this year while the girls were on fall break. Some good friends of ours also wanted to join us. We decided to go to Gualala. It's hard to pronounce. Some people call it gwa-LA-la, but the natives call it wa-LA-la. From the Kashaya Pomo Indian phrase, "ah kha wa la lee" which means, "Where the water flows down", which makes sense--for the river goes out to the ocean right across from the center of town, right by that big sand bar. It's up on the coast of California, north of San Francisco a ways. It's not an easy place to get to and it's not a big place. But, once you've been to Gualala you'll never forget it. We spent a few days in the area about 3 years ago. We love it.

We made reservations for a three nights stay at the Gualala River Redwood Park. We had a beautiful site surrounded by redwoods and a river view. We left on Friday and didn't get an early start so we had to set up camp in the dark. On the drive there we say a beautiful sunset, a cow in the middle of the road, 5 deer, 2 raccoons, a fox, and a skunk. That night we were also visited by a family of raccoons trying to see what food they could find but, Noah scared them away.