We have added a bunch more pics to our photo album for this trip.
After Kris' course finished we had a week to veg out before meeting our friend Marian back in San Francisco where we will spend most of October. Kris made the excellent suggestion that we go and spend a week in Fort Bragg up on the Mendocino coast.
Saturday night sitting outside, in the dark, at the Candlestick RV Park, Kris noticed something "shiny" on one of our car rear tires. Taking a closer look we detected a drywall screw stuck in the tire. We checked, online, and found an OK Tire Store in central San Francisco that was open on Sunday. Since the tire was not visibly leaking air we left the tire. In the morning we checked and it seemed the tire was not any flatter. To be on the safe side, we decided to drive into the OK Tire Store and have it checked. Better to know now that to suffer a flat on the Golden Gate Bridge or somewhere up the freeway! So I, Brian, took off to get the tire looked at while Kris got the trailer ready to head off to Fort Bragg. It didn't take as long to drive to the tire store and I arrived about a half hour before they started. I parked and checked their hours then decided to go grab a coffee. After being parked outside the tire store for about 2 minutes the car started but seemed a bit slow at doing so... anyway... off to the coffee place. Parked outside the coffee place for about 5 minutes and the car would not start afterwards... first the tire now the battery? I called AAA and waited about 45 minutes for the guy to arrive. Basic analysis... battery dying...
Got the car started and drove to the OK Tire Store. The tire turned out to be punctured and was leaking very slowly. Can they patch it? No, the screw punctured the tire too close to the sidewall. New tire required. After discussion, we decided to get two new tires so we would have the same tread etc on the rear tires since we were going to be doing a lot of freeway driving with the trailer. Battery testing was next. Nothing wrong with electrical system. Conclusion... battery dying... New battery required. They were actually quite surprised when I told them that the existing battery was the original with the car. They said it should have died at least a year ago.
Anyway, $450 later, we were on our way. I had noticed that the traffic through central San Francisco was like a bottleneck so we decided to go east across the Bay Bridge then back north across the Richmond Bridge to avoid the traffic through San Fransisco. Everything was going good until we ground to a complete and utter halt half way across the Bay Bridge. Turns out there was an accident on the east side going north (of course, that's the way we were going)... ended up taking about an hour to get across. By this time it was early afternoon so we abandoned plans to go to Fort Bragg on Sunday and stayed in Petaluma at the KOA. By the time we arrived there in mid afternoon the temperature had risen to the mid 20s C so we jumped in the pool to cool off the frustrations of the morning.
Monday morning we headed north up the 101 to Fort Bragg and booked in for the rest of the week at the POMO Campground. We had stayed there in June and it has rapidly risen to near the top of the list of our favorite parks.
We spent the rest of the week exploring the Fort Bragg area as far south as Point Arenas where we had a fabulous lunch down at the pier. We spent several evenings sitting on an outside patio deck at the Noyo River harbor in Fort Bragg. VERY VERY NICE!
The first night there we forgot to put our cooler away (or secure it in some way) and paid the price. We didn't hear anything during the night but awoke to find muddy raccoon paw prints on our cooler.
It took us a while trying to remember everything that we had in the cooler. Turns out the little rotters like gourmet goat cheese, olive loaf sliced ham, pre-schredded tex-mex style cheese, corn tortillas among other things we probably don't remember having in there. At least they closed the cooler when finished.
One of the nice features of the campground is that every site has a fire pit. They use old washing machine barrels for the fire pit and they work real well. We joked that it almost seemed to look like the Rome Coloseum burning....
One morning I, Brian, noticed a big old Banana Slug moving across the campground. Maybe it was after our cooler too?
The silly thing went right through an old bed of fire ashes and got itself totally covered in a mucky ash mess. I didn't think that was a good thing so I immediately created the "unofficial slug relief foundation". I scooped the slug up and put it in the leafy bush then poured water over it to wash off the layer of ash (slugs are very sticky it seems). Cleaned off, the slug made it's way back into the bush not to be seen again. Although, we did see another one in the botanical garden (see our picasa pics) which, for some strange sluggy reason, decided to crawl up one side of a giant stump across the top and down the other side. One can rapidly come to the conclusion that slugs like to go in straight lines regardless of what is in their way, ash pit, giant stump, whatever!!!
A real touristy thing to do in Fort Bragg is to take the Skunk Train out into the redwood forest. This was a 4 hour or so trip (2 out and 2 back with a lunch break at the half way point) through very beautiful forest. Nice.
One of the neat displays they have in downtown Fort Bragg is a section of a huge redwood that was cut down back in the 1960s...
The tree was over 1700 years old when cut down. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you can sort of see a time line just above the saw blade. The 3rd or 4th point, still almost right in the center, marks the size of the tree when the Roman Empire was defeated. To think that Columbus discovered America when the tree was still a relatively young 1200 years old. Amazing.
Some of the week's other highlights:
- Day visit to the town of Mendocino.
- Visit to the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens.Beautiful gardens and shoreline.
- Drive down the coast to Point Arenas and a very nice lunch there.
- Visit to Jug Handle State Park with it's fabulous coast line.
- Walk around the Pomo Point Park with it's equally fabulous coast line.
- Sitting on the patio sipping wine at the Noyo River Harbor.
- Went to the new (2 years old) Fort Bragg Recreation Center. Nice place.
- Just vegging out in an overall great area with great weather.
Some of the week's weirdies:
In Mendocino we stopped for a coffee at a coffee place on the main drag. A fellow sitting at the table next to ours was using his computer when a coffee shop employee (possibly owner) came by and told him he couldn't use his computer in there because it "destroyed the ambience of the coffee shop, people were multi-tasking too much anyway, and besides... those things give off rays you know!". The guy started packing up his computer when Kris said to him... we're reading the paper (a paper version) at the time, what if you were just reading the same paper online? How does that destroy the ambience? The guy just shrugged and left.
While at the Pomo Point Park, we were parked overlooking some of the rugged coast line. A car drove up beside us. The passenger was holding a rubber bin with a goose sitting in it! It appears these folks had taken their pet goose for a ride to see the waves or something? Some guy, presumably a family and goose friend, walked over, reached into the car and gave the goose a pat on the head.
Reminded us of the joke...
"Guy finds a stray penguin. Not sure what to do with it he asks a police officer. The police officer says to take the penguin to the zoo. Next day the police officer spots the guy with the penguin. He stops him and says "hey, I thought you were going to take the penguin to the zoo"... guy responds ... "I did and we had such a good time we decided to go to the beach today!"
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