My girlfriend and I went to Humboldt for Memorial Day; here are my thoughts on the area

[SandyCo]

There's a lot of info in this thread! Wow, thanks for sharing all of that, DCMann2. I'm going to use this for my vacation planning, too.

[OwlKaMyst]

Arcata has many wonderful events. The Kinetic Sculpture race takes the cake! I used to work across the street from where many of the sculptures are made.

Now when talking about Humboldt and weather, one needs to be clear as to what part of Humboldt. Humboldt has many micro-climates and the weather in S. Humboldt is very different than N. Humboldt.
And for Ruth, the waves are not like S. Cal. They make a lot of noise, but are not the pretty rolling waves.

Not sure if they still do it or not, but commercial pilots get their fog flying lessons out of the airport there because of the heavy fog. My mother was a flight attendant and said they train there because it is the foggiest place in the US.

As for drugs. I used to live in Long Beach down south and there was more of an issue with (scary) drugs there than in Humboldt. I don't find that marijuana (what the area is known for) is a 'problem'. The problem drug is meth. Most of the people doing this drug tend to be in certain small pockets. However, they do get around and occasionally one will encounter them.
But I have never had any problems like having things stolen or anything.

[eureka1]

In random order, Arcata has incredibly high property theft rates- NO ONE should leave anything visible in their cars and expect it to be there when they return. Ferndale is lovely but housing is expensive because it's such a small town with many restored Victorians. If you can find a job withins a reasonable commute it could work for you. McKinleyville is unincorporated, the "government" is a utility district and is more and more known for grow houses which have moved from Arcata. I congratulate you for doing more research than a lot of folks do when moving here. I live in Cutten and would be happy to answer any questions you have about Eureka/Cutten. Feel free to DM me.

[oldtrader]

Do the beaches have surf, like farther south in CA, or are they quiet, small waves, like in OR and WA?

The beaches in Humboldt county are not for surfing, etc. Not a place with wide sandy beaches. Cold water, with many of them having an undertow that take you under and out to sea. The sea gets deep fast off the coast there, and does not have the long run up that creates waves in Southern California.

The airport at McKinleyville was ran by the Navy in WWII. It is the foggiest place in the U.S. They experimented with ways to dispose with fog to be able to fly planes all the times in London, etc. You could be driving in heavy fog, and when you got to the airport, they would shoot jellied Gasoline into trenches around the airport, which dispersed the fog away and they could take off and land airplanes. I remember as a teenager, having to get back to Fortuna after a dance in Eureka. The fog was so heavy across Beatrice Flats south of Eureka, that I had to drive with my head out the window trying to see the white line in the middle of the highway at about 5 miles an hour. It does get foggy in that part of the country.

Fortuna south has far less fog, and get a lot more sun than Eureka, Arcata, etc. That is why it has the slogan, 'Sunny Fortuna'. But compared to Southern California, even Fortuna has a lot more fog, rain, and cloudy weather. Real foggy from just south of Eureka through McKinleyville as those areas are by the ocean.

Get back a ways, like Bayside, and Cutten, and you find much less fog and warmer weather.

Marijuana is the big drug produced in that part of California in a 3 county area known as the Emerald Triangle. It is grown in the woods, and a lot of people get in trouble just trying to hike in the woods and run across a Marijuana patch. It is estimated than almost half the people make their money in some way from the Marijuana industry in part of the counties there. Arcata and some other areas up there, are known for the grow houses, where they turn homes into indoor Marijuana factories growing Marijuana all over the house. That is what a lot of the houses are used for. They even have radio stations that warn when the feds are in town as part of their new, and a big Marijuana Festival that takes over the town every year.