This morning we both woke up early. Outside it was pitch dark and clearly still quite cold. Checking the internet for breakfast places in Crescent City 
Crescent City fishing harbor
produced the discovery that things wouldn't get started here for about an hour, so we took our time getting ready, having made a list of three possible breakfast places (not including Denny's which does not open until 8 a.m.). When we thought we might find an open diner, we drove toward the bay and found The Fisherman's Lounge which provided warmth, excellent decaf coffee and tea and large portions of breakfast.
Now we were ready for anything. We reviewed the sights Elsa had seen - seals sunning themselves, people enjoying the beach, a family of elk along the coast, the bustling fishing harbor, the now-closed light station near the shore - and decided to continue our sightseeing.
Before Covid-19, we would have accumulated tourist brochures from the places we visited as we traveled, but the New Normal means that no unnecessary paperwork can be found in motels or on cashier counters or any of the usual places.
But when we visited the Grant's Pass art museum, we found a small stack of local area maps and guides and grabbed them, especially when the museum 
Old light station
hostess told us about a special site in the redwoods that was her favorite place. She tried to show us on the map but couldn't quite remember the name of the special grove of trees, except that it was quite close to Crescent City.
This morning, looking at the large book of Oregon and California coastal attractions, we thought we had identified the place she had mentioned, so, pleased with the time available before checkout, we decided to look for it: Stout Grove. We found a sign to Stout Grove, just as we finished our drive through town. It pointed us down a narrow side road, which almost at once began to climb and become narrower. It's not a good road, we said. Too much work.
We turned around.
But we did keep thinking about it. Bob decided that there must be another way to reach Stout Grove, approaching from a different direction perhaps. Sure enough, soon we found another small sign and another narrow side road, but this one looked more used (it was an hour later). We started in again.
This time we stuck to our plan, even though the road soon turned to packed dirt. We were in redwoods now, and the road twisted and turned to avoid the 
Short woman or really tall tree
giant trees, while lined on both sides with moss and ferns and small shrubs. We were in a huge redwood forest! Checking the various maps we had taken from the museum, we found corroboration because one or another might show a named road we would pass. We might have driven six or seven miles, but it seemed like more because we traveled at a walking pace in order to clear the trees and rocks.
Suddenly we began to find National Forest signs naming different groves of redwoods, and one of them was Stout Grove, just as the lady at the museum in Grant's Pass had promised. A parking area was just around the corner. In fact, we weren't alone. Three or four cars were already parked. We climbed out and enjoyed being in the middle of this group of giant trees.
But we needed to return to check out of the motel. We continued by driving the route we would have taken earlier. It was challenging. At times it seemed as though our truck must be too wide to pass between the trees, and at other times a turn in the trail revealed a car coming toward us - but in all these cases, our luck held as the other drivers turned aside and stopped until we crept past.
Finally, we found ourselves back on pavement, at the spot where we had originally turned back!
The remainder of today's trip was much less thrilling! We checked out and drove south. We were within sight of the ocean for a while, then we would be back in forest, but it all continued to be beautiful. At one point we were stopped by a road construction project involving a cherry-picker truck whose crew seemed to be blasting rock; another stop 
Lumberjack devouring lunch!
was another crew building a new bridge over a creek. Both looked like major projects.
Just north of Eureka, we stopped for lunch at an old favorite from many years ago: the Samoa Cookhouse, built in 1893. The cookhouse had fed loggers and mill workers, who put away huge amounts of food to keep their muscles working. But the local economy has changed and today it welcomed all comers. Diners sit at long tables with red and white checkered tablecloths and eat the food provided. Today we had a choice of navy bean soup or salad, beef stroganoff on egg noodles, and chocolate cake.
When we saw the billboards for the State of Jefferson, we wondered whether we might be confronted by partisan speechmaking, but we haven't seen any sign that any of the residents even think about this much. As several people have said, the people here include lots of retired folks and people who just want to have a quiet life out in the country. The people lunching along with us today could have been the same people we last ate with on our last visit ten years ago, or twenty years before that.