The first year we went to the Redwood Run was 1985. I believe it was the 8th annual one. My husband had built his '47 Knucklehead a couple of years earlier. We had taken the Knucklehead on some rides, but this was our first big motorcycle rally.

It was about 240 miles from our home to the run in Humboldt County and the closer we got the more Harleys we saw. At that time the Redwood Run was being held at French's Camp, near Richardson's Grove, seven miles south of Garberville on Highway 101.

We stayed at the KOA campground across the highway to save the price of a ticket, which I think was about $15-$20 each at that time.

We picked out a spot, dropped our gear went on into town. At the bar in Garberville we ran into our old friend Bob, a fellow knucklehead rider. It really was quite a coincidence as he was from southern California and we didn't even know he was coming.

Bob told us he was there with a whole group of other knuckleheads, who rode up from Southbay, in the LA area, camped back at the KOA.

The next morning we crawled out from under our tent, which we hadn't even bothered to set up the night before, and took a lap around the campground to find them. Our buddy, Cousin Mike, was there with all of his friends. They'd had about as rough a night as we had, but he had a pretty good hangover cure, and pretty soon we were feeling OK.

That year was the beginning of a longstanding tradition for us, our friends from southern California came back every year and so did we. It was really almost the only time we saw each other, but we camped together year after year.