I enjoyed towing my 36 ft trailer over CA-36 from Red Bluff to Fortuna. But at the time it was impossible to get north of Groveland on 101, so 20 was out, 299 had four slide closings with alternating one way traffic average time from I-5 to 101 was 13 hours. and 199 was almost 200 miles extra driving. It is as either give up going to Refwoods or 36.
However I would never recommend traveling that road. There was barely any traffic and I found plenty of places to pull over let others past. Average speed on 36 was about 19.5 mph.