H to I to J: Cedarville, Ca to Fort Bidwell, CA to Pit River Campground

We woke at 7am to the public announcement system greeting us - "Good morning race fans!" Max procured us some coffee and breakfast sandwiches from the food vendor and we settled in to watch the racers practice. This was our first motocross event, and it was neat to see that it was a true family sport - there were all levels of racers, from seven-year olds on four-wheelers to their dads on high-cc dirt bikes. The dirt track was full of bumps and jumps - it looked like lots of fun. We saw Tim and Terry again, our race photographer friends that had welcomed us to the fairgrounds the night before. They were glad that we were enjoying ourselves.As the sun got higher and higher and it got hotter, we decided to leave and explore Surprise Valley. We hadn't filled up in Alturas, so we had to choose between visiting Fort Bidwell or Eagleville, and we chose to drive north to Fort Bidwell. The drive to Ft. Bidwell is a great way to take in Surprise Valley - a high elevation valley with a giant lake and lots of alfalfa. Fort Bidwell didn't seem to boast anything but private property, so we drove back south to friendly downtown Cedarville.We had seen what looked like a second-hand store - Good Things & The Barn. The Barn was a big yard sale, Max found some cool shirts and a leather jacket for a dollar. Good Things was a collection of over twenty vendors selling all sort of things - clothes, purses, homemade soaps and aprons, kitchen items and more. Emily found a really neat collapsible wire egg basket that she is excited to use when collecting vegetables from her garden at home.We parked closer to the center of town and walked around to the other open businesses. We had tuned into KDUP, another local community FM radio station the night before, and started to look for their offices. As it was a Sunday, no one was around, but they were in the same building as the Giddy Up ice cream parlor, so we indulged in a scoop of Butter Pecan and bought a postcard. We then wandered over to the Floating Island bookstore, where the owner Michael was just packing up, but he let us wander around and chatted with us about the area. He recommended some books by James Joyce for Max and he seemed to think that we would be back to Cedarville. We probably will.Following some signs we saw for yard sales, we found a few and shopped around. Not knowing what else to do, and running low on gas, we headed back out on 299 to stock up in Alturas. We drove south along 299 through some cute towns, Adin and Fall River Mills to a BLM campground along the Pit River. Our access pass gave us a 50% discount on the $8 fee and we had plenty of time to have some soup with vegetables and relax. We did kick ourselves a bit for not visiting Eagleville. Next time.

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