Early morning sighting by motorist along the Eel River witnessed in Humboldt County, California

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While on vacation driving down from Seattle we stopped and camped at KOA Fortuna July,1992. On this trip was my wife and three children. We decided to get an early start the next day so we could drive through Humboldt Redwoods State Park with little or no traffic to enjoy the landscape without too much distraction. We packed up and drove southbound as we approached an area of Hwy 101 were the Eel River makes a large bend towards the highway I saw movement down by the river. My vantage point was above the animal I saw and I was driving slowly. What I saw was a human like "creature" walking slowly away from the river across a rocky sandbar towards the forest. The color appeared to be a reddish brown. The creature walked with the same apparent gait as the creature seen in the Patterson film. It wasn't a bear, bears don't walk with an apparent human type gait. I talked to my wife after driving several miles down the road and prior to me asking her if she had seen anything unusal she said...