We based our operations at Hopland, CA, milepost 100, which offered convenient access to the north and south portions of the railroad we intended to work on. On Sunday, Tom Slivka brought out his mowing machine and worked on the weeds north of Hopland. He and his gang, Doug Broberg and John Graham worked in a continuing drizzle to get about 3 miles of the row cleaned up.

On Monday, Rose and Ed Kuidis, and Mike Flaherty showed up to put in their time. We went down to tunnel #5 at Cloverdale where the row was overgrown pretty badly. A few hours work and everything was made presentable.  It rained intermittently throughout the day

On Tuesday we decided to head up to Willits (m.p. 139.5). We left Hopland at 10 am and arrived in Willits at 5 pm. We encountered trees, brush, paved over flangeways, and earthmover tires that had been rolled onto the tracks. Our first challenge was in Ukiah as we had to clean out the flangeways which many have paved over sections.  The weeds on this section of the railroad are some of the worst we encountered and hopefully Tom will come back here with his machine and clean up the tracks. Also, the homeless folks have set up a few camps along the tracks and we had to toss aside makeshift chairs and tables and lots of garbage in order to get through.

From Ukiah we went through Calpella Bluffs - an area that we had spent 2 days cleaning up last year. As you can see by the above photo you wouldn't know it although I'm sure that if we hadn't cleaned it up last year that we wouldn't have made it through there at all this year. The Bluffs are a very moist area and always a trouble spot for the railroad. Near Redwood Valley we crossed a trestle that had apparently caught fire this last winter but the beams are so thick that it suffered very superficial damage. Someone has come in and replaced some of the walkway fencing since then.

At milepost 131.4 we are at Ridge - the highest point on the NWP. The tracks are in pretty good shape outside of a couple of twisty rails around m.p. 128 - a condition created by the sliding of the mountain. The wild flowers were in full bloom and some of the work we did last year still looked good. On the north side of the summit near the horse shoe curve we encountered another downed tree. Then on the straight stretch coming into Willits some kids had rolled a giant earth mover tire, which was full of water, onto the tracks. We found some rails to use to prop it up and slowly move it off of the tracks. Finally we get to Willits and check out how nicely the Skunk Railroad has cleaned up the depot grounds and the yard adjacent to it. 

Our trip back to Hopland was of course,  much faster and we spent some time taking pictures at the wig wag at one of the lumber yards in north Ukiah. No doubt if this property was accessible to the public this wig wag would not be standing.

Wednesday brought the biggest crew - John Atkinson, Mike Flaherty, Doug Broberg, John Schubert, Dino Granzella, Chris Ogilvie, and  Greg Brahms. We decided that we were going to try to get to Healdsburg at m.p. 68. These tracks haven't seen any kind of usage since, probably, Chris Baldo's New Years Trip of 2003 and they showed it. Of course we encountered the usually shrubs and weeds, but when we got to M.P. 75 I drove up onto a mud berm that had formed in a cut from a culvert that flows onto the r.o.w. and now has no outlet, probably due to local farmers blocking drainages. The mud was about 1 to 2 feet deep and about 40 in length. John Atkinson was all for shoveling it out and we did start that. But then one of the locals happened to walk by and we saw that he had a back hoe hanging around. Well with some pleading and some trading (Greg Brahms is co-owner of a new restaurant in Santa Rosa called Flavor and he offered a free meal to the kind fellow for the use of his back hoe) he allowed Greg to take that hoe and within 15 minutes we had a cleared right of way. Way to go Greg.