As 2010 comes to a close we are in Calgary for the winter.
Next up is a trip to Europe in late March.
Happy New Year to all.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Week 13 - Portland, Oregon to Calgary, Alberta
Our general travel route for this week...
Due to brutal weather conditions this was not a good picture taking week... only one pic as shown below.
Well, the weather forecasts were not improving a lot. There looked to be a severe winter storm about to hit the Washington northeast area, so when we saw a brief window of opportunity, to get to Spokane, we jumped at it. The forecast for Sunday looked to be relatively clear. We got up early in Portland and hit the road.
The highway along the Columbia river valley was in excellent shape with no snow down that low yet. Just a bit wet with the danger of being slick with quite low temperatures. We stopped for a brief lunch along the way and arrived in Spokane late afternoon.
As we approached Spokane the temperature dropped, the wind increased and it started to snow. We had thought we might stay in the KOA just east of Spokane but that thought was dashed as we approached. We hit a couple of small black ice spots which made us think seriously about what we wanted to do. Listening to the local radio weather reports convinced us that we should head for a hotel instead of the KOA. While we could keep the small trailer fairly warm with our heater, the thought of having to go out to the restroom at 3:00 AM in very cold temperatures was less than appealing.
We had previously stayed in the Mirabeau Park Hotel so decided to give it a try. They were ok with us parking across multiple spaces just outside our room so that we could run electric cords out to both the trailer and the car (we had stuff in the trailer which we really didn't want to get frozen solid). As a bonus, after they found out we were Canadian, they reduced the rate about 10% (apparently a couple of the owners were Canadian as well). So we hunkered down for the night. It snowed about 3 inches overnight and the news/weather reports on the local tv stations showed a brutal situation with many cars off the road and numerous accidents. We decided it would be a good idea to sit tight for at least another day.
Never having driven with a trailer in these conditions, we took the opportunity to do a bit of test driving around Spokane. Sticking to main streets we soon realized that our small trailer pulled just fine in the road conditions at hand. No problems stopping and starting and no issues with skidding if we were careful. Turns out buying those new all season tires was a good move after all. We drove around a bit, went to a Starbucks for a coffee where we sat and read, then drove down to the Spokane Valley Mall where we went to the new Harry Potter movie then to the Outback Steakhouse for dinner before returning to the hotel to await what Tuesday would bring weatherwise.
Tuesday was not much better. In fact the news/weather reports indicated many local area highways were closed, high winds up in north Idaho and more accidents. The basic advise was "if you don't have to go out today then don't". We didn't so we decided to stay another day. Repeat of driving... Starbucks, movie and the Outback Steakhouse again. The movie was Due Date. Likely one of the worst we have seen in a long, long time if not ever. Even the dog wasn't funny.
Tuesday night the forecast changed a bit with news of a bitterly cold front hitting the area but little if any more snow. Wednesday morning forecast was clear and bitterly cold with the winds in north Idaho abating. We saw this as an opportunity as the forecast for Thursday was another arctic front hitting with the possibility of much more snow... time to make a dash if we could.
We got up Wednesday morning and were ready to leave by daybreak. As forecast it was clear and very cold. The temperature shown in our Nissan was -23 C. We decided to give it a go. If we could get to Cranbrook then we would be only one day from home. If we couldn't get that far then maybe we could get at least to Bonners Ferry in north Idaho and be just a jump from the border. Well, the freeway to Coeur d'Alene was clear and easy going. Turning north towards Sandpoint and the border we found the highway to be in excellent winter driving condition. The morning stayed clear and before we knew it we had completed a beautiful drive up through Sandpoint to Bonners Ferry and were on our way to the border. There was virtually no traffic on the roads. Nice.
When we arrived at the border it was -22 C and there were no other cars around. The border agent asked us the obligatory questions and sent us on our way. The road north of the border was more compact snow but again very little traffic so we took our time and headed to Cranbrook. Much to our surprise we made Cranbrook by noon so decided to take advantage. We stopped for a quick lunch then headed north to Radium.
We arrived in Radium mid afternoon but decided that was enough for one day. We stayed overnight at the Prestige Inn where they have a very nice indoor swimming pool and hot tub which we decided to use rather than drive up to the hot springs. Nice meal in the hotel restaurant and called it a night.
Thursday we hit the road around 10:00 AM. Again there was very little traffic on the highway to Banff. We were able to take our time and enjoy a beautiful clear (albeit cold) drive through the snowy mountains. Beautiful. After stopping for a quick coffee in Canmore we headed off on the final stretch to the trailer storage yard just west of Calgary. Parked the trailer, packed most things into the car and headed home to Calgary.
Arrived home about 4:00 PM on Thursday Nov 25th. That's it for this trip.
As a post mortem lookback... that dishwasher that went on the fritz just as we were preparing to leave on this trip... well, it turned out to be a wire short which almost caused a fire. The repair guy said we were lucky we stopped it when we did. A wire connection had come loose and the short burned it's way through two other wires. That's why when we tried to restart it we had no success. Well that's fixed. A relatively easy repair and we are back on track again.
Due to brutal weather conditions this was not a good picture taking week... only one pic as shown below.
Well, the weather forecasts were not improving a lot. There looked to be a severe winter storm about to hit the Washington northeast area, so when we saw a brief window of opportunity, to get to Spokane, we jumped at it. The forecast for Sunday looked to be relatively clear. We got up early in Portland and hit the road.
The highway along the Columbia river valley was in excellent shape with no snow down that low yet. Just a bit wet with the danger of being slick with quite low temperatures. We stopped for a brief lunch along the way and arrived in Spokane late afternoon.
As we approached Spokane the temperature dropped, the wind increased and it started to snow. We had thought we might stay in the KOA just east of Spokane but that thought was dashed as we approached. We hit a couple of small black ice spots which made us think seriously about what we wanted to do. Listening to the local radio weather reports convinced us that we should head for a hotel instead of the KOA. While we could keep the small trailer fairly warm with our heater, the thought of having to go out to the restroom at 3:00 AM in very cold temperatures was less than appealing.
We had previously stayed in the Mirabeau Park Hotel so decided to give it a try. They were ok with us parking across multiple spaces just outside our room so that we could run electric cords out to both the trailer and the car (we had stuff in the trailer which we really didn't want to get frozen solid). As a bonus, after they found out we were Canadian, they reduced the rate about 10% (apparently a couple of the owners were Canadian as well). So we hunkered down for the night. It snowed about 3 inches overnight and the news/weather reports on the local tv stations showed a brutal situation with many cars off the road and numerous accidents. We decided it would be a good idea to sit tight for at least another day.
Never having driven with a trailer in these conditions, we took the opportunity to do a bit of test driving around Spokane. Sticking to main streets we soon realized that our small trailer pulled just fine in the road conditions at hand. No problems stopping and starting and no issues with skidding if we were careful. Turns out buying those new all season tires was a good move after all. We drove around a bit, went to a Starbucks for a coffee where we sat and read, then drove down to the Spokane Valley Mall where we went to the new Harry Potter movie then to the Outback Steakhouse for dinner before returning to the hotel to await what Tuesday would bring weatherwise.
Tuesday was not much better. In fact the news/weather reports indicated many local area highways were closed, high winds up in north Idaho and more accidents. The basic advise was "if you don't have to go out today then don't". We didn't so we decided to stay another day. Repeat of driving... Starbucks, movie and the Outback Steakhouse again. The movie was Due Date. Likely one of the worst we have seen in a long, long time if not ever. Even the dog wasn't funny.
Tuesday night the forecast changed a bit with news of a bitterly cold front hitting the area but little if any more snow. Wednesday morning forecast was clear and bitterly cold with the winds in north Idaho abating. We saw this as an opportunity as the forecast for Thursday was another arctic front hitting with the possibility of much more snow... time to make a dash if we could.
We got up Wednesday morning and were ready to leave by daybreak. As forecast it was clear and very cold. The temperature shown in our Nissan was -23 C. We decided to give it a go. If we could get to Cranbrook then we would be only one day from home. If we couldn't get that far then maybe we could get at least to Bonners Ferry in north Idaho and be just a jump from the border. Well, the freeway to Coeur d'Alene was clear and easy going. Turning north towards Sandpoint and the border we found the highway to be in excellent winter driving condition. The morning stayed clear and before we knew it we had completed a beautiful drive up through Sandpoint to Bonners Ferry and were on our way to the border. There was virtually no traffic on the roads. Nice.
When we arrived at the border it was -22 C and there were no other cars around. The border agent asked us the obligatory questions and sent us on our way. The road north of the border was more compact snow but again very little traffic so we took our time and headed to Cranbrook. Much to our surprise we made Cranbrook by noon so decided to take advantage. We stopped for a quick lunch then headed north to Radium.
We arrived in Radium mid afternoon but decided that was enough for one day. We stayed overnight at the Prestige Inn where they have a very nice indoor swimming pool and hot tub which we decided to use rather than drive up to the hot springs. Nice meal in the hotel restaurant and called it a night.
Thursday we hit the road around 10:00 AM. Again there was very little traffic on the highway to Banff. We were able to take our time and enjoy a beautiful clear (albeit cold) drive through the snowy mountains. Beautiful. After stopping for a quick coffee in Canmore we headed off on the final stretch to the trailer storage yard just west of Calgary. Parked the trailer, packed most things into the car and headed home to Calgary.
Arrived home about 4:00 PM on Thursday Nov 25th. That's it for this trip.
As a post mortem lookback... that dishwasher that went on the fritz just as we were preparing to leave on this trip... well, it turned out to be a wire short which almost caused a fire. The repair guy said we were lucky we stopped it when we did. A wire connection had come loose and the short burned it's way through two other wires. That's why when we tried to restart it we had no success. Well that's fixed. A relatively easy repair and we are back on track again.
| Back to Week 12 |
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Week 12 - Coos Bay, Oregon to Portland, Oregon
Our general travel route for this week...
Since it has been raining quite heavily all week, we have added only a few pics, from a brief stop at the "Spruce Goose" museum, to our photo album for this trip.
While at Coos Bay we checked long term weather forecasts for the different places along the route we planned to take home to Calgary. Forecasts didn't look particularly good but we decided to move on anyway and try to place ourselves where we could get home within a few days once a pretty good weather window opened up.
The first night this week we stayed at the KOA in Lincoln City. Pretty well the only ones there, except for the rain. Drove around the town a bit before deciding to go to the local casino since the food at the casino buffets was pretty decent and we could spend a couple of hours lounging around there anyway. End result.. won $18. WOW, that's $53 we've taken from Oregon casinos, not counting a few drinks and dinners of course... so they likely came out ahead in the long run.
Next day we headed inland through McMinnville and stopped at the Evergreen Air Museum to get a glimpse of Howard Hughes "Spruce Goose". When we arrived in McMinnville we didn't know where the goose was so asked a guy for directions. He told us the direction then said "look for the waterslide with the 747 sitting on top of it". He was right, couldn't miss it!
We expected to see the goose stored in an old warehouse, but not so, What a fabulous museum. Since we wanted to get to Portland early in the afternoon we didn't spend anywhere near the time warranted at this museum. Snapped a few pics, which we added to our picasa album, but not too much showing of the goose because of it's massive size (check their website). Definitely a return trip is in order.
There are a couple of RV parks fairly close to downtown Portland but we decided to stay a bit further out. Reviews we read about the ones close to downtown were not the best, so... Anyway, we ended up about a half hour east of downtown in Fairview at the Fairview/Portland RV Park which apparently is rated as one of the top 100 in the country by Good Sam and Woodalls. Park was fairly empty except for a section that is clearly long term stays. Decent washrooms, good showers and a nice clubhouse we were able to sit in, use our computers, read or whatever if we needed a break from the wee trailer while the rain poured down.
Since we have been travelling in the rain for the last week or so, our carpet (in the trailer) got quite wet. We assumed it was just from us walking in and out with wet feet. While in Portland we noticed that it just was not getting any drier and decided to take it up. It was then that we noticed a fairly steady stream of water running in along side the door. Aha, it wasn't just us! Somewhere in the door closure there was a place where the rain was finding it's way in. We couldn't find the source so had to resort to other measures, ie. if we couldn't stop it, could we at least control it. Off to Fred Meyer we went and bought some cheap towels and some... get ready for this... sham-wows... to use to build a temporary water containment system. The sham-wows were laid across the door and they did a great job of soaking up the water. Vince was right. The towels were laid on top and across the trailer floor to act as a temporary "carpet" which could easily be washed. Voila! Worked very well. It took about 3 full days to get the real carpet dried out (when we went out for the day, we left the heater on, in the trailer, and pointed at the carpet then at night we just rolled up the carpet and put it in the car... not much else we could do).
Anyway, we hit a weather system that made us decide to stay in Portland for the entire week rain or not. Well, it was pretty well all rain. We still took the opportunity to explore various neighbourhoods and found some pretty cool districts including, but not limited to, the Arts district, the Pearl district and Hawthorne. The muni is very good. Where we stayed was near downtown Gresham where one of the muni train lines to downtown Portland ran. Downtown Portland in about half an hour with no hassles about finding a place to park. Nice. Unfortunately, we timed our return a bit poorly as we hit rush hour out of downtown. A tad crowded but we made it back in a relatively decent amount of time but rush hour is definitely to be avoided if possible. All in all, Portland is definitely a city to come back to in warmer, drier times.
Since it has been raining quite heavily all week, we have added only a few pics, from a brief stop at the "Spruce Goose" museum, to our photo album for this trip.
While at Coos Bay we checked long term weather forecasts for the different places along the route we planned to take home to Calgary. Forecasts didn't look particularly good but we decided to move on anyway and try to place ourselves where we could get home within a few days once a pretty good weather window opened up.
The first night this week we stayed at the KOA in Lincoln City. Pretty well the only ones there, except for the rain. Drove around the town a bit before deciding to go to the local casino since the food at the casino buffets was pretty decent and we could spend a couple of hours lounging around there anyway. End result.. won $18. WOW, that's $53 we've taken from Oregon casinos, not counting a few drinks and dinners of course... so they likely came out ahead in the long run.
Next day we headed inland through McMinnville and stopped at the Evergreen Air Museum to get a glimpse of Howard Hughes "Spruce Goose". When we arrived in McMinnville we didn't know where the goose was so asked a guy for directions. He told us the direction then said "look for the waterslide with the 747 sitting on top of it". He was right, couldn't miss it!
We expected to see the goose stored in an old warehouse, but not so, What a fabulous museum. Since we wanted to get to Portland early in the afternoon we didn't spend anywhere near the time warranted at this museum. Snapped a few pics, which we added to our picasa album, but not too much showing of the goose because of it's massive size (check their website). Definitely a return trip is in order.
There are a couple of RV parks fairly close to downtown Portland but we decided to stay a bit further out. Reviews we read about the ones close to downtown were not the best, so... Anyway, we ended up about a half hour east of downtown in Fairview at the Fairview/Portland RV Park which apparently is rated as one of the top 100 in the country by Good Sam and Woodalls. Park was fairly empty except for a section that is clearly long term stays. Decent washrooms, good showers and a nice clubhouse we were able to sit in, use our computers, read or whatever if we needed a break from the wee trailer while the rain poured down.
Since we have been travelling in the rain for the last week or so, our carpet (in the trailer) got quite wet. We assumed it was just from us walking in and out with wet feet. While in Portland we noticed that it just was not getting any drier and decided to take it up. It was then that we noticed a fairly steady stream of water running in along side the door. Aha, it wasn't just us! Somewhere in the door closure there was a place where the rain was finding it's way in. We couldn't find the source so had to resort to other measures, ie. if we couldn't stop it, could we at least control it. Off to Fred Meyer we went and bought some cheap towels and some... get ready for this... sham-wows... to use to build a temporary water containment system. The sham-wows were laid across the door and they did a great job of soaking up the water. Vince was right. The towels were laid on top and across the trailer floor to act as a temporary "carpet" which could easily be washed. Voila! Worked very well. It took about 3 full days to get the real carpet dried out (when we went out for the day, we left the heater on, in the trailer, and pointed at the carpet then at night we just rolled up the carpet and put it in the car... not much else we could do).
Anyway, we hit a weather system that made us decide to stay in Portland for the entire week rain or not. Well, it was pretty well all rain. We still took the opportunity to explore various neighbourhoods and found some pretty cool districts including, but not limited to, the Arts district, the Pearl district and Hawthorne. The muni is very good. Where we stayed was near downtown Gresham where one of the muni train lines to downtown Portland ran. Downtown Portland in about half an hour with no hassles about finding a place to park. Nice. Unfortunately, we timed our return a bit poorly as we hit rush hour out of downtown. A tad crowded but we made it back in a relatively decent amount of time but rush hour is definitely to be avoided if possible. All in all, Portland is definitely a city to come back to in warmer, drier times.
| Back to Week 11 | On to Week 13 |
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Week 11 - Santa Cruz, California to Coos Bay, Oregon
Our general travel route for this week...
We have added a few more pics to our photo album for this trip (see squirrel-mobile below).
Luckily the rain in Santa Cruz lasted just one night and one day so started to dry off by late Sunday afternoon and by the time we left on Monday everything was pretty dry and ready to pack.
On Monday we did the monster drive all of about 60 miles to Pacifica. We found a RV place in Pacifica that looked like it might be a good alternative to staying at the Candlestick RV Park so we decided to stay at least one night to check it out.
On the drive up to Pacifica the temperature dropped and strong cold winds greeted us when we arrived at the Pacifica RV park. We had hoped to try out their pool (it was still open) but the wind was so strong and cold that we decided against it. The park is within walking distance to a little shopping center so we stocked up on some groceries then went to a "lounge" for a couple of glasses of wine. We to use the word "lounge" rather loosely as it seemed more like a clubhouse, but we sat and took in the action both in the "lounge" and on the tv while we sipped our wine then headed back to the trailer. On the way back, we walked past the most amazing "squirrel mobile" car...
Although we only stayed the one night in Pacifica we concluded that it would be a good alternative to the Candlestick RV park...
Definitely doable!
On Tuesday we headed north across the GG Bridge to the KOA up in the mountain above Cloverdale. Even in the pouring rain this is a beautiful place. Since the KOA is a bit out of the way, we had bought some steaks to bbq but ended up deciding that it was way to wet to do anything outside so we saved them for the next night to see what the weather would be like then.
The rain abated overnight and we awoke Wednesday morning to a clear, slightly crisp day. Perfect. We drove down to Healdsburg for a day's outing. What a charming little place. A really nice garden plaza in the centre of town surrounded by cool shops and eateries. We spent most of the day there. Wednesday evening back at the KOA was a beautiful starry night, perfect for that long awaited bbq.
Thursday we drove north to Arcata where we spent two nights. Thursday evening we went into downtown Arcata for a very nice pizza. A downside of Arcata is that everything seems to close up early and they appear to subscribe to the low light theory so the streets are not brightly lit making them not the most comfortable places to walk around in. There also appears to be a rather eclectic collection of street folks (mostly harmless it seems) wandering around in Arcata, resulting in an apparent abundance of fodder for The Arcata Eye Police Blotter which makes an interest, albeit humourous, read most days.
Friday we divided the day between looking around Arcata and Eureka with a lunch break just south of Eureka at "Gill's by the Bay"... this is a fabulous seafood place. Check it out if you are ever in the area.
Even though the weather in Arcata was mostly clear and sunny it was still a bit on the chilly side so we decided to keep heading north towards home knowing that the short (and long) term forecast for the Oregon coast was mostly rain. Leaving Arcata Saturday morning we stopped in Crescent City for a nice lunch before heading into Oregon where we hit a lot of fog and rain just north of the state line. Pretty much a waste of the Oregon coast when you can't see any of it! Oh well, another time!
Ended the week with a night in Coos Bay where we went to the local casino. They'll be glad to see our backs leaving town. Took them for $35... :-). They have a seafood buffet on Saturdays .... oh, I know, casino food, how bland ... but we are deep in the heart of seafood country here and the selection of salmon, fresh oysters, crab, cooked fish, shrimp, mussels - all very good. Vegetables, not so much. What they did to vegetables can only be described as a culinary crime.
We have added a few more pics to our photo album for this trip (see squirrel-mobile below).
Luckily the rain in Santa Cruz lasted just one night and one day so started to dry off by late Sunday afternoon and by the time we left on Monday everything was pretty dry and ready to pack.
On Monday we did the monster drive all of about 60 miles to Pacifica. We found a RV place in Pacifica that looked like it might be a good alternative to staying at the Candlestick RV Park so we decided to stay at least one night to check it out.
On the drive up to Pacifica the temperature dropped and strong cold winds greeted us when we arrived at the Pacifica RV park. We had hoped to try out their pool (it was still open) but the wind was so strong and cold that we decided against it. The park is within walking distance to a little shopping center so we stocked up on some groceries then went to a "lounge" for a couple of glasses of wine. We to use the word "lounge" rather loosely as it seemed more like a clubhouse, but we sat and took in the action both in the "lounge" and on the tv while we sipped our wine then headed back to the trailer. On the way back, we walked past the most amazing "squirrel mobile" car...
Although we only stayed the one night in Pacifica we concluded that it would be a good alternative to the Candlestick RV park...
- Only about 10 minutes drive to the SF Zoo where you can park and take the muni downtown for much less than parking downtown. There are also commuter buses... Candlestick is a drive only place.
- The park is within walking distance to many amenities... Candlestick not!
- The park has a pool... Candlestick not!
Definitely doable!
On Tuesday we headed north across the GG Bridge to the KOA up in the mountain above Cloverdale. Even in the pouring rain this is a beautiful place. Since the KOA is a bit out of the way, we had bought some steaks to bbq but ended up deciding that it was way to wet to do anything outside so we saved them for the next night to see what the weather would be like then.
The rain abated overnight and we awoke Wednesday morning to a clear, slightly crisp day. Perfect. We drove down to Healdsburg for a day's outing. What a charming little place. A really nice garden plaza in the centre of town surrounded by cool shops and eateries. We spent most of the day there. Wednesday evening back at the KOA was a beautiful starry night, perfect for that long awaited bbq.
Thursday we drove north to Arcata where we spent two nights. Thursday evening we went into downtown Arcata for a very nice pizza. A downside of Arcata is that everything seems to close up early and they appear to subscribe to the low light theory so the streets are not brightly lit making them not the most comfortable places to walk around in. There also appears to be a rather eclectic collection of street folks (mostly harmless it seems) wandering around in Arcata, resulting in an apparent abundance of fodder for The Arcata Eye Police Blotter which makes an interest, albeit humourous, read most days.
Friday we divided the day between looking around Arcata and Eureka with a lunch break just south of Eureka at "Gill's by the Bay"... this is a fabulous seafood place. Check it out if you are ever in the area.
Even though the weather in Arcata was mostly clear and sunny it was still a bit on the chilly side so we decided to keep heading north towards home knowing that the short (and long) term forecast for the Oregon coast was mostly rain. Leaving Arcata Saturday morning we stopped in Crescent City for a nice lunch before heading into Oregon where we hit a lot of fog and rain just north of the state line. Pretty much a waste of the Oregon coast when you can't see any of it! Oh well, another time!
Ended the week with a night in Coos Bay where we went to the local casino. They'll be glad to see our backs leaving town. Took them for $35... :-). They have a seafood buffet on Saturdays .... oh, I know, casino food, how bland ... but we are deep in the heart of seafood country here and the selection of salmon, fresh oysters, crab, cooked fish, shrimp, mussels - all very good. Vegetables, not so much. What they did to vegetables can only be described as a culinary crime.
| Back to Week 10 | On to Week 12 |
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Week 10 - San Francisco to Santa Cruz, California
Our general travel route for this week...
We have added a few more pics to our photo album for this trip.
After nearly 4 weeks in the rental house in San Francisco it was time to think about returning to life in our little trailer.
The first two days of this week were still in San Francisco so we did a couple of things we liked to do as well as packed and did our share of cleaning the house. When Marian was still here we hiked a bit of the way up to the top of Grand View Peak, so we decided to finish the job. What a view over the city...
On Monday we packed the car and headed back up to Petaluma to rescue our trailer out of storage at the Petaluma KOA. We stayed that night at the KOA. Must say, the house was nice but being back in our little trailer, in our own bed, was very nice.
Monday night was game 5 of the World Series and being Giants fans we had to watch this. The KOA provides cable service, at each site, but we thought it would be better to watch it in the KOA lounge on their big screen TV. We went into the lounge at about the time the game was to start. Nobody around. TV off. Looking around we saw no evidence of a TV remote to turn the thing on/off or change channels and no indication how to turn the darn thing on. I, Brian, headed over to the office while Kris waited in the lounge. Upon arriving back at the lounge with a KOA staffer, I found Kris sitting watching the ball game! Turns out that she just plugged it in at which time the power and channel buttons became more obvious! The KOA staffer, a young lady, commented that Kris was clearly a lot more "technical" that I was! We all had a good laugh.
We watched a few innings in the lounge. At one point a guy comes in and asks about the score. He then asks who won game 1. We told him that the Giants did but this was game 5 not game 2...He was dumbfounded and said that they had been travelling too long and he lost track. We asked how long they had been travelling... "just under two weeks"... HUH!
After a few innings it was time to head back to our site to make dinner. We set up our own little tv outside to watch the game while we made dinner, ate under the stars and cheered loudly when the Giants won the game and the World Series. Nice.
On Tuesday off we went to Santa Cruz where we decided we would stay for about a week and just rest and see some more of that area. Rather than do the "Mapquest recommended" trip around the East Bay, we went over the Golden Gate bridge, took the highway 1 turn off through the Presidio, across Geary Street to the ocean shore near the Cliff House then just followed the shore south through Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz. Much, much nicer than the freeway down the east bay even if it took a tad longer.
While in Santa Cruz, we did day trips to Carmel, Watsonville, Gilroy and into Santa Cruz as well as visits to numerous beaches to watch the surf and the surfers. The day we went to the Moss Landing beach area we were able to sit and watch a playful otter, only about 15 feet away, for about half an hour (unfortunately we didn't have our camera with us).
All through the area the fields were either being harvested or being seeded for the next round of crops, mostly strawberries. The fields being readied for strawberries were being set up with their covering of plastic. From a distance it looked either like a lake or a snow glacier.
Another amazing sight was the endless fields of brussel sprouts. In some cases, as far as the eye can see. Who knew? So many people claim to not like these little guys but somebody somewhere must be eating a lot of them!
On Saturday when we went into Santa Cruz to see the local surfing museum we lucked out as we came across a surfing competition. WOW... (again we didn't have our camera with us; we'll have to rectify that behaviour!)... was that ever neat, with competition divisions for little kids to seasoned pros. Little kids were called the "Squid Class".
We had fabulous weather all week. Unfortunately as this week ended, the rain started... more on that next week!
We have added a few more pics to our photo album for this trip.
After nearly 4 weeks in the rental house in San Francisco it was time to think about returning to life in our little trailer.
The first two days of this week were still in San Francisco so we did a couple of things we liked to do as well as packed and did our share of cleaning the house. When Marian was still here we hiked a bit of the way up to the top of Grand View Peak, so we decided to finish the job. What a view over the city...
On Monday we packed the car and headed back up to Petaluma to rescue our trailer out of storage at the Petaluma KOA. We stayed that night at the KOA. Must say, the house was nice but being back in our little trailer, in our own bed, was very nice.
Monday night was game 5 of the World Series and being Giants fans we had to watch this. The KOA provides cable service, at each site, but we thought it would be better to watch it in the KOA lounge on their big screen TV. We went into the lounge at about the time the game was to start. Nobody around. TV off. Looking around we saw no evidence of a TV remote to turn the thing on/off or change channels and no indication how to turn the darn thing on. I, Brian, headed over to the office while Kris waited in the lounge. Upon arriving back at the lounge with a KOA staffer, I found Kris sitting watching the ball game! Turns out that she just plugged it in at which time the power and channel buttons became more obvious! The KOA staffer, a young lady, commented that Kris was clearly a lot more "technical" that I was! We all had a good laugh.
We watched a few innings in the lounge. At one point a guy comes in and asks about the score. He then asks who won game 1. We told him that the Giants did but this was game 5 not game 2...He was dumbfounded and said that they had been travelling too long and he lost track. We asked how long they had been travelling... "just under two weeks"... HUH!
After a few innings it was time to head back to our site to make dinner. We set up our own little tv outside to watch the game while we made dinner, ate under the stars and cheered loudly when the Giants won the game and the World Series. Nice.
On Tuesday off we went to Santa Cruz where we decided we would stay for about a week and just rest and see some more of that area. Rather than do the "Mapquest recommended" trip around the East Bay, we went over the Golden Gate bridge, took the highway 1 turn off through the Presidio, across Geary Street to the ocean shore near the Cliff House then just followed the shore south through Half Moon Bay to Santa Cruz. Much, much nicer than the freeway down the east bay even if it took a tad longer.
While in Santa Cruz, we did day trips to Carmel, Watsonville, Gilroy and into Santa Cruz as well as visits to numerous beaches to watch the surf and the surfers. The day we went to the Moss Landing beach area we were able to sit and watch a playful otter, only about 15 feet away, for about half an hour (unfortunately we didn't have our camera with us).
All through the area the fields were either being harvested or being seeded for the next round of crops, mostly strawberries. The fields being readied for strawberries were being set up with their covering of plastic. From a distance it looked either like a lake or a snow glacier.
Another amazing sight was the endless fields of brussel sprouts. In some cases, as far as the eye can see. Who knew? So many people claim to not like these little guys but somebody somewhere must be eating a lot of them!
On Saturday when we went into Santa Cruz to see the local surfing museum we lucked out as we came across a surfing competition. WOW... (again we didn't have our camera with us; we'll have to rectify that behaviour!)... was that ever neat, with competition divisions for little kids to seasoned pros. Little kids were called the "Squid Class".
We had fabulous weather all week. Unfortunately as this week ended, the rain started... more on that next week!
| Back to Weeks 6-9 | On to Week 11 |
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Weeks 6-9 - San Francisco California
Our general travel route for this week...
We have added some more pics to our photo album for this trip.
After spending a great week in Fort Bragg it was time to head back to San Francisco where we spent the next 4 weeks in a rented house.
Leaving Fort Bragg, we decided to take a different route back out to the 101 highway, so headed south to take highway 128 east to Cloverdale. What a huge surprise this drive was. Absolutely beautiful drive from the rugged coastline through large Redwood forests and on into the Anderson Valley which is a relatively new producer of Pinot Noir wines.
The first order of business was to put the trailer in storage. The KOA in Petaluma offers storage for fairly reasonable $65 a month, so we decided to stay Sunday night at the KOA, leave the trailer, in storage, there Monday and head into San Francisco to meet our friend Marian at the rental house which we took possession of early Monday afternoon. We somehow managed to time our arrivals perfectly as Marian's taxi from the airport arrived just as we parked our car in front of the house...
The house is in the Sunset District of San Francisco. We have never stayed in this area before so were excited to see what the neighbourhood was like. The house is in a great location. With offstreet parking we could leave the car and take public transit to pretty well anywhere we wanted to go in San Francisco. We were one block away from a Muni rail line which goes downtown. In fact, if we were to stay here another time during the summer, the rail line goes right to AT&T park where we could attend Giants baseball games. The house is also one block from 19th Ave which is a major Muni bus route where we can easily get from here to the Golden Gate bridge and on to the Marina district on a single bus, one easy transfer away from either Filmore street or North Beach. Very, very convenient. A one week Muni passport, for unlimited rides, is only $26 and is very handy.
Nearby, within walking distance, we discovered an Irish pub, a "taco bar", many Asian restaurants, Starbucks (of course) and numerous smaller grocery markets with lots of fresh veggies, fruit etc. A little farther afoot, for which we used the car, but in a pinch the transit would have worked, is a large Andronico's market which has pretty well every grocery item one could need.
The house, which we rented through VRBO, is a small, older very nicely maintained and furnished place. Although the beds were a bit on the soft side for us, everything was pretty well A-ONE. The landlady even upped her cable service for us, at no extra cost, so that we could watch the Giants World Series playoff run. How sweet is that? Having excellent laundry and kitchen facilities were great. We were able to take advantage of some of the cool SF markets and do a lot of our own meals cutting down costs considerably, although we did try out a number of new restaurants.
Our friend, Marian, was able to only stay the first two weeks with us as she had to return to Vancouver and the working life. Still, we made the most of it. Lots of adventure day trips inside and outside the city, museums, sightseeing and shopping.
Day trips outside the city included:
Museums included:
Shopping? Well let's not go there!
We've been to San Francisco many other times but usually on short trips for a long weekend getaway or on a business conference. This was our first "live the life for a month" stay in SF. We generally tried to keep to our "rule" of doing one thing each day while just relaxing and enjoying the city. We found parking to be a bit of a headache with limits on time etc. Using the city's public transport system (the Muni) was easy and allowed us to visit places without having to worry about time left on the parking meter. For the last couple of weeks we bought the 7-day passports which give unlimited rides on the Muni system (not the BART though). Our house was one block away from the N-Line rail which goes right downtown in only about 20 minutes or so. We were also only one block away from 19th Ave which is a major bus route.
Some of our favorite things to do for an outing:
A nice day outing:
A slight variation made it easy to get to another favorite area ...Fillmore Street:
Other days we did things like jump on and off the various Muni lines to see different neighbourhoods, when we spotted something cool looking or for a lunch at some place new. The BurgerMeister in Cole Valley, for example... we can attest to their great burgers.
A short ride on the N-Line from here is the area of 9th Ave and Irving. Lots of little shops, restaurants, bars (very popular night life) along with a yoga studio we discovered which happened to offer a 3 week (2 nights per) workshop on Iyengar Yoga. We signed up and had an excellent set of workshops.
A quick drive (25 blocks) down to the coast with lots of parking and beautiful sand beach to wander on and marvel at the waves. Beautiful.
Being in San Francisco while the Giants (baseball) made their run to the World Series was a lot of fun. Probably not impossible to get game tickets but very expensive (standing room only were going for minimum $500; seats were averaging well over $1000), so we opted to be participants in the packed local pubs with all the cheering, chanting, etc etc etc that goes with the situation. Lots of fun.
We have added some more pics to our photo album for this trip.
After spending a great week in Fort Bragg it was time to head back to San Francisco where we spent the next 4 weeks in a rented house.
Leaving Fort Bragg, we decided to take a different route back out to the 101 highway, so headed south to take highway 128 east to Cloverdale. What a huge surprise this drive was. Absolutely beautiful drive from the rugged coastline through large Redwood forests and on into the Anderson Valley which is a relatively new producer of Pinot Noir wines.
The first order of business was to put the trailer in storage. The KOA in Petaluma offers storage for fairly reasonable $65 a month, so we decided to stay Sunday night at the KOA, leave the trailer, in storage, there Monday and head into San Francisco to meet our friend Marian at the rental house which we took possession of early Monday afternoon. We somehow managed to time our arrivals perfectly as Marian's taxi from the airport arrived just as we parked our car in front of the house...
Nearby, within walking distance, we discovered an Irish pub, a "taco bar", many Asian restaurants, Starbucks (of course) and numerous smaller grocery markets with lots of fresh veggies, fruit etc. A little farther afoot, for which we used the car, but in a pinch the transit would have worked, is a large Andronico's market which has pretty well every grocery item one could need.
The house, which we rented through VRBO, is a small, older very nicely maintained and furnished place. Although the beds were a bit on the soft side for us, everything was pretty well A-ONE. The landlady even upped her cable service for us, at no extra cost, so that we could watch the Giants World Series playoff run. How sweet is that? Having excellent laundry and kitchen facilities were great. We were able to take advantage of some of the cool SF markets and do a lot of our own meals cutting down costs considerably, although we did try out a number of new restaurants.
Our friend, Marian, was able to only stay the first two weeks with us as she had to return to Vancouver and the working life. Still, we made the most of it. Lots of adventure day trips inside and outside the city, museums, sightseeing and shopping.
Day trips outside the city included:
- South along the coast through Pacifica to Half Moon Bay. Beautiful coast drive, lots of surfers to watch and a great lunch at Sam's Chowder House in Half Moon Bay.
- North across the Golden Gate Bridge through the Muir Woods National Monument to Stinson Beach. Another beauty drive and a nice picnic lunch at Stinson Beach.
- East to Berkeley for shopping, museum and excellent lunch at the famous Chez Panisse restaurant.
- North up 101 to Geyserville and the Francis Ford Coppola winery for general sightseeing and lunch at their patio restaurant.
Museums included:
- SF Rail Museum
- De Young Museum
- Legion of Honor
- Asian Museum
- UC Berkeley Art Museum
- Oakland Museum of California
- San Francisco Botanical Gardens (ok, not a museum...but a relatively cool place nonetheless)
Really cool special exhibits at the museums:
- "To Dye For" fabric show at the De Young.
- Japanese screen prints at the Asian Museum.
- Japanese wood block printing at the Legion of Honor.
- 25 years of Pixar Animation at the Oakland Museum. This was really neat!
Shopping? Well let's not go there!
A nice day outing:
- Walk a block to the N-Line. Take the train downtown and get off at the Powell Street Station.
- Wander around downtown making our way to Sutter and Stockton where we jumped on a #30 bus up to North Beach.
- Wander around the shops at North Beach and stop for a most excellent coffee at Cafe Roma.
- Jump on another #30 which then goes around to the Marina district. Walk a few blocks up to Union Street to wander around the shops there and maybe have a nice lunch.
- Walk back down to Fillmore and Lombard and catch the #28 bus. This bus goes along the Marina to the Golden Gate Bridge (can get off here and walk the bridge if desired - we've done that before) then south through the Presidio and Golden Gate Park to stop at, where else, 19th Ave and Kirkham - one block from our house ... SWEET.
A slight variation made it easy to get to another favorite area ...Fillmore Street:
- After getting off the N-Line at Powell, walk up past Union Square to Sutter Street.
- Jump on a #3 bus which goes along Sutter to Fillmore then up Fillmore to Sacramento where we get off, walk across the street to Peet's Coffee for a sip and a read on our Kindles.
- Wander around Fillmore for awhile, maybe going into Mollie Stones for some dinner groceries or maybe having a late lunch at La Mediteranee, a most excellent restaurant.
- Jump on the #22 bus south to where it crosses the N-Line at Church Street, switch to the N-Line to get home. Easy peasy!
Other days we did things like jump on and off the various Muni lines to see different neighbourhoods, when we spotted something cool looking or for a lunch at some place new. The BurgerMeister in Cole Valley, for example... we can attest to their great burgers.
A short ride on the N-Line from here is the area of 9th Ave and Irving. Lots of little shops, restaurants, bars (very popular night life) along with a yoga studio we discovered which happened to offer a 3 week (2 nights per) workshop on Iyengar Yoga. We signed up and had an excellent set of workshops.
| Back to Week 5 | On to Week 10 |
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Week 5 - San Francisco California to Fort Bragg California
Our general travel route for this week...
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....
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:
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!"
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!"
| Back to Week 4 | On to Week 6 |
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Week 4 - San Francisco California
This being a total "San Fran" week, we have no travel map for this week.
We have added a few more pics to our picasa web album for this trip.
The beginning of the week was interesting at the Candlestick RV Park. It is located literally right across the road from Candlestick Park (hence the obvious name) where the San Francisco 49rs NFL football team play their home games. Monday was such a game and was also the nationwide Monday Night Football Game broadcast on ESPN.
A couple of spots over from us were two very large RVs. These were apparently the "real fans". The folks for one RV had rented two spots and by Sunday night had decked the place out with more 49rs paraphenalia than you can shake many sticks at. The "social event" had begun.
When we left early Monday morning, to take Kris to the "first day of class" for her haute couture sewing class, the RV park was still mostly empty. The RV park management guy warned us about timing our return to the park. Since the game started at 6:00 (or thereabouts) he said either get back by 4:00 or wait until about 7:30-8:00 by which time there would be little traffic getting into the stadium BUT by a little after 8:00 they change all the traffic lanes to go away from the area so there is no returning to the RV park until around 10:00 when they reverse the lanes again. So we planned accordingly!
WELL...approaching the Candlestick area, we could here the crowd noise from the stadium a good 10 blocks or more away. The HUGE parking lots were full and the RV Park was absolutely crammed. Apparently the RV Park management take full advantage of their location and sell every possible nook and cranny to game day parkers. One of the big RV fan guys had apparently rented the spot next to ours. Earlier in the day he had asked if we minded if his son parked "a bit" into our spot as it was going to be tight. TIGHT, TIGHT he said... hah... at least they did leave us enough room to squeeze our Pathfinder in front of our trailer.
So the game ends shortly after. What a madhouse as the early leavers are rushing to their cars to avoid the after game exodus crush. It was like a swarm of ants going through the RV park. Relatively soon afterwards the car exiting, from the RV park, calmed down and the hoards of folks who were actually staying the night began the serious business of tailgate cookouts and general discussions of what happened to "their team". We chatted and drank a bit with folks around us. Mostly very avid fans who needed to drown their sorrows as the 49rs lost on the last play of the game against last years champions, the New Orlean Saints. Much to our surpise the tailgating mayhem actually died down by about 11:00 and all was pretty well quiet well before midnight.
We were likely the first ones up the next day. What a sight. We can honestly say we have never seen so much garbage and other post game, tailgating detritus strewn across the parking lots around the stadium. It looks like the organizers of these things look to the strength of the wind and the seagulls to get rid of as much stuff as possible. Maybe the wind blows a lot of it to Oakland, who knows? This picture is from Thursday morning, a full 2+ days after the game ended. A lot of the Trash across the parking lots has blown into the fences but still enough around to get many seagulls excited.
Finally later on Thursday we saw crews starting to clean up the mess. By late Saturday it was pretty well all cleaned up.
Anyway, enough of the 49rs...
All in all, the Candlestick RV park is a convenient place to stay. It is on the serious windy side so difficult to cook outside. Our decision to not have inside cooking facilities meant we either ate out or brought back pre-made deli type meals.
Turns out the Giants played a day game, at AT&T Park, on Sunday so we decided to spend the afternoon at the ball park. Had great seats and once again our home team mojo was out in force as the Giants beat the Milwaukee Brewers 9-2. There were a couple of home runs including a grand slam for the Giants. That always gets the crowd up on their feet. We recalled the game we saw in Dodger Stadium on our last trip in June when a fellow with the "best hair" sat a few rows in front of us. Well, it appears we might be a magnet for other folks with cool hair... (notice the guy with the whack of dreadlocks and the guy with the huge spikes)... No wonder the musical "Hair" was set in SF.
For the rest of the week, other than in the early morning and evenings we went our own ways...
Brian
It was mostly a week of doing domestic duties like laundry and other cleaning around the trailer. Not much to do but the laundry at the RV park was incredibly slow so easy to spend a full morning just doing a load of towels. The rest of the time was spent doing some sight seeing and checking out a variety of neat stores in light industrial areas of the city. These are not your average retail stores! Lots of cool stuff. Usually after dropping Kris off at Apparal Arts I'd go back to the RV park and do the clean up stuff then head off to one of several favorite coffee shops where I'd sit and read my Kindle for awhile before going off on a mini adventure. I only ate at In-N-Out Burgers twice and Johnny Rockets Diner once. A couple of times I drove down to the Marina or over by the Cliff House to sit by the beach and just enjoy it.
On Wednesday, the Oakland A's played an afternoon game so I jumped on the BART and went over to watch it. Wednesday day games have $2.00 seating and $1.00 hot dogs so it was a cheapie. The crowd was only around 10,000 so there were lots of good seats everywhere. I decided rather than sit way out in the outfield (which were not terrible seats) I'd head around behind home plate. Since the crowd was so small there was no checking to make sure folks sat in the correct seats. I haven't had a stadium dog in ages so had a couple of the $1.00 dogs. I saw some folks ordering like a dozen of those things... yikes!
All in all the game was close but through terrible mismanagement of the bullpen pitching staff (not just my opinion but all those around me as well) the A's lost the lead in the 9th inning and were not able to recover so down went the home team.
Kris
The sewing course was scheduled to run from 9:30 - 6PM Monday to Saturday. The Apparel Arts School is in a huge old warehouse that has been renovated to provide lease space for a variety of creative businesses. There are lots of webby/IT type of businesses, graphic designers, people appearing to build sets for TV and movie shoots, etc. Brian asked one guy in the adjacent office what they did (since their space Random Technologies was the most ginormous server farm I have seen), and the guy responded with a rather vague "we do some research for the chemical industry". OK ..... with enough computing power to run an entire country?? One nice aspect is there is a rather high end catering company on site that sells very good food for a lunch crowd as a side-line to their main business- not your standard cafeteria (unless your cafeteria features hand made ice cream sandwiches and fancy pasteries with gold leaf on top).
Apparel Arts has a large space with big east facing windows and large worktables and all the sewing gear you could want, including an entire army of dress forms.
I had spend most of the summer agonizing over my fitting muslin; hoping beyond hope that at some point the poor thing would grow to resemble the Chanel jacket. I sewed 3 muslins before leaving for the trip and finally had one that I thought was close to OK. The first day the instructor pulled the muslin mostly apart and re-fit it by draping it on me. The results were better than I could achieve myself and the resulting bodice was much closer fitting than anything I would normally sew. I commented that I couldn't really move my arms much; apparently that is the norm for couturier clothing. You have to just stand still and move like a praying mantis. Kind of a relief to rule out that tiresome business of actually moving or lifting a cup of coffee.
Monday afternoon we all went to Britex Fabrics to do our shopping (NOT for the faint of heart or pocketbook). I had already bought some wool for the fashion fabric and was lucky eought to find a 3 yard remnant so I wouldn't have to sweat about ruining fabric that might cost $150 a yard but by the time I had my lining, trim and buttons I concluded that I really shouldn't have been concerned about saving on the fashion fabric!
The basic drill for the jackets is to fit the muslin, mark the sewing lines, trim the muslin back to the sewing lines, baste the muslin to the fashion fabric along the sewing lines and then cut out vague shapes that leave at least 2" around the sewing lines. The lining is then pinned to the fashion fabric shapes and cut out in the same generous chunks. Then the fun begins. The lining is quilted to the fashion fabric leaving an inch or so free inside the seam line and the bodice seams are basted, leaving the lining 'hanging'. The bodice is fitted again and the shoulder seam placement is roughly established. The bodice seams are steamed open, the lining seams are hand finished with fell stitches. The result is quite remarkable - the interior of the jacket is as beautiful as the exterior and if you use a printed lining the seams are almost invisible. In my case, I used a red and tan Betsy Johnson "petite pois" (sounds better in the french than polka dots!) ...it sounds quite reasonable, but bear in mind that this far took me until Friday. Somewhere along the way I managed to snuffle up a cold germ that was floating by and got sick on Tuesday! By Thursday I was ready to call it quits I felt so crummy, but perservered since I didn't want to miss anything. The next step is to sew the sleeves (also quilted and hand finished inside) and after the final fitting to truly establish the shoulder seam placement, to pin the sleeves in place. The sleeves are set by hand. That is as far as I got on Saturday and will finish the rest of the sewing later. All the sewing that remains is hand stitching - probably shouldn't take any more than another 200 hours .;-)
At the beginning of the course the instructor indicated that it was unlikely any of us would finish our jackets during the week and she was correct. She also indicated that by the end of the week we might consider the $30,000 price tag of a couturier Chanel Jacket to be something of a bargain (she was right). Some people got further along than I did but I was very pleased with my work, did not make any cutting mistakes (one lady had a major boo boo and almost didn't have enough fabric to make her sleeves) and didn't have to rip anything out. Some of the ladies were taking the class for the second or third time just because the instruction is very good and the entire process is, oddly, very enjoyable. In the end, the jackets are truly couturier jackets, unlike the Chanel Jackets that retail in Holts for $9000 and have (horrors!!) fusible interfacing.
I learned a lot about fitting and the garment construction and, most importantly, I learned that if I sew standing up for 8 hours a day my ankles and knees will swell up like little stovepipes and I will hobble around like a penguin.
We have added a few more pics to our picasa web album for this trip.
The beginning of the week was interesting at the Candlestick RV Park. It is located literally right across the road from Candlestick Park (hence the obvious name) where the San Francisco 49rs NFL football team play their home games. Monday was such a game and was also the nationwide Monday Night Football Game broadcast on ESPN.
A couple of spots over from us were two very large RVs. These were apparently the "real fans". The folks for one RV had rented two spots and by Sunday night had decked the place out with more 49rs paraphenalia than you can shake many sticks at. The "social event" had begun.
When we left early Monday morning, to take Kris to the "first day of class" for her haute couture sewing class, the RV park was still mostly empty. The RV park management guy warned us about timing our return to the park. Since the game started at 6:00 (or thereabouts) he said either get back by 4:00 or wait until about 7:30-8:00 by which time there would be little traffic getting into the stadium BUT by a little after 8:00 they change all the traffic lanes to go away from the area so there is no returning to the RV park until around 10:00 when they reverse the lanes again. So we planned accordingly!
WELL...approaching the Candlestick area, we could here the crowd noise from the stadium a good 10 blocks or more away. The HUGE parking lots were full and the RV Park was absolutely crammed. Apparently the RV Park management take full advantage of their location and sell every possible nook and cranny to game day parkers. One of the big RV fan guys had apparently rented the spot next to ours. Earlier in the day he had asked if we minded if his son parked "a bit" into our spot as it was going to be tight. TIGHT, TIGHT he said... hah... at least they did leave us enough room to squeeze our Pathfinder in front of our trailer.
So the game ends shortly after. What a madhouse as the early leavers are rushing to their cars to avoid the after game exodus crush. It was like a swarm of ants going through the RV park. Relatively soon afterwards the car exiting, from the RV park, calmed down and the hoards of folks who were actually staying the night began the serious business of tailgate cookouts and general discussions of what happened to "their team". We chatted and drank a bit with folks around us. Mostly very avid fans who needed to drown their sorrows as the 49rs lost on the last play of the game against last years champions, the New Orlean Saints. Much to our surpise the tailgating mayhem actually died down by about 11:00 and all was pretty well quiet well before midnight.
We were likely the first ones up the next day. What a sight. We can honestly say we have never seen so much garbage and other post game, tailgating detritus strewn across the parking lots around the stadium. It looks like the organizers of these things look to the strength of the wind and the seagulls to get rid of as much stuff as possible. Maybe the wind blows a lot of it to Oakland, who knows? This picture is from Thursday morning, a full 2+ days after the game ended. A lot of the Trash across the parking lots has blown into the fences but still enough around to get many seagulls excited.
Finally later on Thursday we saw crews starting to clean up the mess. By late Saturday it was pretty well all cleaned up.
Anyway, enough of the 49rs...
All in all, the Candlestick RV park is a convenient place to stay. It is on the serious windy side so difficult to cook outside. Our decision to not have inside cooking facilities meant we either ate out or brought back pre-made deli type meals.
Turns out the Giants played a day game, at AT&T Park, on Sunday so we decided to spend the afternoon at the ball park. Had great seats and once again our home team mojo was out in force as the Giants beat the Milwaukee Brewers 9-2. There were a couple of home runs including a grand slam for the Giants. That always gets the crowd up on their feet. We recalled the game we saw in Dodger Stadium on our last trip in June when a fellow with the "best hair" sat a few rows in front of us. Well, it appears we might be a magnet for other folks with cool hair... (notice the guy with the whack of dreadlocks and the guy with the huge spikes)... No wonder the musical "Hair" was set in SF.
For the rest of the week, other than in the early morning and evenings we went our own ways...
Brian
It was mostly a week of doing domestic duties like laundry and other cleaning around the trailer. Not much to do but the laundry at the RV park was incredibly slow so easy to spend a full morning just doing a load of towels. The rest of the time was spent doing some sight seeing and checking out a variety of neat stores in light industrial areas of the city. These are not your average retail stores! Lots of cool stuff. Usually after dropping Kris off at Apparal Arts I'd go back to the RV park and do the clean up stuff then head off to one of several favorite coffee shops where I'd sit and read my Kindle for awhile before going off on a mini adventure. I only ate at In-N-Out Burgers twice and Johnny Rockets Diner once. A couple of times I drove down to the Marina or over by the Cliff House to sit by the beach and just enjoy it.
On Wednesday, the Oakland A's played an afternoon game so I jumped on the BART and went over to watch it. Wednesday day games have $2.00 seating and $1.00 hot dogs so it was a cheapie. The crowd was only around 10,000 so there were lots of good seats everywhere. I decided rather than sit way out in the outfield (which were not terrible seats) I'd head around behind home plate. Since the crowd was so small there was no checking to make sure folks sat in the correct seats. I haven't had a stadium dog in ages so had a couple of the $1.00 dogs. I saw some folks ordering like a dozen of those things... yikes!
All in all the game was close but through terrible mismanagement of the bullpen pitching staff (not just my opinion but all those around me as well) the A's lost the lead in the 9th inning and were not able to recover so down went the home team.
Kris
The sewing course was scheduled to run from 9:30 - 6PM Monday to Saturday. The Apparel Arts School is in a huge old warehouse that has been renovated to provide lease space for a variety of creative businesses. There are lots of webby/IT type of businesses, graphic designers, people appearing to build sets for TV and movie shoots, etc. Brian asked one guy in the adjacent office what they did (since their space Random Technologies was the most ginormous server farm I have seen), and the guy responded with a rather vague "we do some research for the chemical industry". OK ..... with enough computing power to run an entire country?? One nice aspect is there is a rather high end catering company on site that sells very good food for a lunch crowd as a side-line to their main business- not your standard cafeteria (unless your cafeteria features hand made ice cream sandwiches and fancy pasteries with gold leaf on top).
Apparel Arts has a large space with big east facing windows and large worktables and all the sewing gear you could want, including an entire army of dress forms.
I had spend most of the summer agonizing over my fitting muslin; hoping beyond hope that at some point the poor thing would grow to resemble the Chanel jacket. I sewed 3 muslins before leaving for the trip and finally had one that I thought was close to OK. The first day the instructor pulled the muslin mostly apart and re-fit it by draping it on me. The results were better than I could achieve myself and the resulting bodice was much closer fitting than anything I would normally sew. I commented that I couldn't really move my arms much; apparently that is the norm for couturier clothing. You have to just stand still and move like a praying mantis. Kind of a relief to rule out that tiresome business of actually moving or lifting a cup of coffee.
Monday afternoon we all went to Britex Fabrics to do our shopping (NOT for the faint of heart or pocketbook). I had already bought some wool for the fashion fabric and was lucky eought to find a 3 yard remnant so I wouldn't have to sweat about ruining fabric that might cost $150 a yard but by the time I had my lining, trim and buttons I concluded that I really shouldn't have been concerned about saving on the fashion fabric!
The basic drill for the jackets is to fit the muslin, mark the sewing lines, trim the muslin back to the sewing lines, baste the muslin to the fashion fabric along the sewing lines and then cut out vague shapes that leave at least 2" around the sewing lines. The lining is then pinned to the fashion fabric shapes and cut out in the same generous chunks. Then the fun begins. The lining is quilted to the fashion fabric leaving an inch or so free inside the seam line and the bodice seams are basted, leaving the lining 'hanging'. The bodice is fitted again and the shoulder seam placement is roughly established. The bodice seams are steamed open, the lining seams are hand finished with fell stitches. The result is quite remarkable - the interior of the jacket is as beautiful as the exterior and if you use a printed lining the seams are almost invisible. In my case, I used a red and tan Betsy Johnson "petite pois" (sounds better in the french than polka dots!) ...it sounds quite reasonable, but bear in mind that this far took me until Friday. Somewhere along the way I managed to snuffle up a cold germ that was floating by and got sick on Tuesday! By Thursday I was ready to call it quits I felt so crummy, but perservered since I didn't want to miss anything. The next step is to sew the sleeves (also quilted and hand finished inside) and after the final fitting to truly establish the shoulder seam placement, to pin the sleeves in place. The sleeves are set by hand. That is as far as I got on Saturday and will finish the rest of the sewing later. All the sewing that remains is hand stitching - probably shouldn't take any more than another 200 hours .;-)
At the beginning of the course the instructor indicated that it was unlikely any of us would finish our jackets during the week and she was correct. She also indicated that by the end of the week we might consider the $30,000 price tag of a couturier Chanel Jacket to be something of a bargain (she was right). Some people got further along than I did but I was very pleased with my work, did not make any cutting mistakes (one lady had a major boo boo and almost didn't have enough fabric to make her sleeves) and didn't have to rip anything out. Some of the ladies were taking the class for the second or third time just because the instruction is very good and the entire process is, oddly, very enjoyable. In the end, the jackets are truly couturier jackets, unlike the Chanel Jackets that retail in Holts for $9000 and have (horrors!!) fusible interfacing.
I learned a lot about fitting and the garment construction and, most importantly, I learned that if I sew standing up for 8 hours a day my ankles and knees will swell up like little stovepipes and I will hobble around like a penguin.
| Back to Week 3 | On to Week 5 |
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Week 3 - Oroville California to San Francisco California
Our general travel route for this week...
We've also added a few more pics to our photo album for this trip.
Taking a travel day off while in Oroville, we did a day trip to the small city of Chico (pop approx 87k) about 35 minutes away. Easy drive and lots of easy parking downtown without the trailer. Downtown Chico was a nice find. There is a university right downtown so there are lots of young folks with the associated eateries, cool shops and coffee places. After parking we headed for a Peet's Coffee place and sat by the window to read and watch the Chico world go by. Very nice.
Wandering around Chico, we came across a neat store that houses the National Yo-Yo Museum and store. Who knew? End result, the kid in Brian had to buy a spiffy new high density plastic "Velocity" yoyo. It used to be a yoyo was just two little pieces of wood joined together with a wooden dowel with a string wrapped around. NOT ANY MORE... these things are high tech gadgets with adjustable gaps, friction, special string and god knows what else. It's a good thing this place is near a university as it may require a full degree to figure out even the basics of tricks... like "walk the dog". We'll see how many times Brian can bop himself in the head with this one. A young man who helped us was a previous "national champion" so he did some yoyo demoing for us. He had that yoyo flying all over the place and not once did he hit himself in the head (or nuts for that matter). This pic is from their website...
Continuing our wandering we came across some excellent art galleries and other stores all within a few blocks of the edge of the university campus. We also discovered (although we might have known before and had just forgotten) that Chico is home to the Orient and Flume glass works company. We stopped in at their shop and museum too admire their exceptionally fine glass art works. The lady there was quite interested when Kris described a piece of their art work we purchased over 30 years ago. Back then we paid about $40 for the piece. Similar works today are in the $300-400 range.
Returning to the KOA at Oroville, we decided, what the heck, the casino buffet dinner last night was pretty good so let's do a repeat. This time though the casino video poker machines cheated us out of $30 before we headed for the buffet. At least it was quite good again.
After Oroville we had planned a relatively short drive southwest to Clear Lake. Clear Lake is supposed to be the largest fresh water lake in the state and the pictures of a RV park near Kelseyville looked pretty good. The short route was around the bottom of the lake but we decided, it being a very nice day, that we would drive around the top and stop somewhere along the way for a lakeside lunch. Although it is a relatively pretty drive, it was a major disappointment. The entire lakefront appears to be privately owned. We saw only one small "park" (if you can call it that) with one picnic table but there was no place to park with the trailer. The other thing we noticed is that the lake appears to have a lot of weed growth near the shore so it did not look like good swimming in any event. So we just drove around the top of the lake eventually arriving at the RV park near Kelseyville. Disappointment number two. The RV park looked like a dark, dank place out of a Stephen King novel. We drove in and right away noticed that the pool was closed and the water's edge looked pretty dirty with sludge from boats docked there. We turned a 180 and drove away. Since the day had been a relatively short drive (going around the top of the lake had added only an hour or so) we headed west over highway 175 which is a euphemism for "the windiest up and down country road, with sharp, deep dropoffs you will likely ever see". We soon realized why they had posted a sign telling folks with longer vehicles to not even think about going over this highway.
However, once again, the old proverb about good things come to those who wait (or something like that) came into play as we ended up at the Cloverdale/Healdsburg KOA which is up in the mountains above the wine country. We have stayed here a couple of times previously and had forgotten how beautiful it is up there. Not to mention the fact that the KOA folks have added a fabulous pool since we were last there. We stayed two nights in a 99% empty campground. It was great with fabulous weather and clear bright night skies with kerzillions of stars on display. We decided we would likely stay here again for a couple of more nights on our way back home later in November.
On wednesday we did a day trip into Calistoga. Wednesday was birthday day for our friend Sabina, back in Calgary. To celebrate, on her behalf, we decided to try a "mud bath spa and massage".
It was a bit weird at first but it felt real good afterwards. On a previous holiday in the Czech Republic we did a "beer spa". Comparing the two we both decided that the beer spa was nicer. Kris suggested that the mud spa was what it would be like if you were sitting in a giant cow pie.
Calistoga is about an hours drive from the KOA. The drive down highway 128 is very pretty as you go past vineyard after vineyard. The number of vineyards almost seems endless.
On Thursday we drove all of about 50 miles south to Petaluma as the last stopover before hitting San Francisco. On the way we stopped at the Francis Ford Coppola winery for a very fine lunch and pretty cool walkthrough of the displays of his films etc.
Friday was a short drive across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco where we set up the trailer in the Candlestick RV Park for the next week while Kris attends her haute couture sewing class.
We've also added a few more pics to our photo album for this trip.
Taking a travel day off while in Oroville, we did a day trip to the small city of Chico (pop approx 87k) about 35 minutes away. Easy drive and lots of easy parking downtown without the trailer. Downtown Chico was a nice find. There is a university right downtown so there are lots of young folks with the associated eateries, cool shops and coffee places. After parking we headed for a Peet's Coffee place and sat by the window to read and watch the Chico world go by. Very nice.
Wandering around Chico, we came across a neat store that houses the National Yo-Yo Museum and store. Who knew? End result, the kid in Brian had to buy a spiffy new high density plastic "Velocity" yoyo. It used to be a yoyo was just two little pieces of wood joined together with a wooden dowel with a string wrapped around. NOT ANY MORE... these things are high tech gadgets with adjustable gaps, friction, special string and god knows what else. It's a good thing this place is near a university as it may require a full degree to figure out even the basics of tricks... like "walk the dog". We'll see how many times Brian can bop himself in the head with this one. A young man who helped us was a previous "national champion" so he did some yoyo demoing for us. He had that yoyo flying all over the place and not once did he hit himself in the head (or nuts for that matter). This pic is from their website...
Continuing our wandering we came across some excellent art galleries and other stores all within a few blocks of the edge of the university campus. We also discovered (although we might have known before and had just forgotten) that Chico is home to the Orient and Flume glass works company. We stopped in at their shop and museum too admire their exceptionally fine glass art works. The lady there was quite interested when Kris described a piece of their art work we purchased over 30 years ago. Back then we paid about $40 for the piece. Similar works today are in the $300-400 range.
Returning to the KOA at Oroville, we decided, what the heck, the casino buffet dinner last night was pretty good so let's do a repeat. This time though the casino video poker machines cheated us out of $30 before we headed for the buffet. At least it was quite good again.
After Oroville we had planned a relatively short drive southwest to Clear Lake. Clear Lake is supposed to be the largest fresh water lake in the state and the pictures of a RV park near Kelseyville looked pretty good. The short route was around the bottom of the lake but we decided, it being a very nice day, that we would drive around the top and stop somewhere along the way for a lakeside lunch. Although it is a relatively pretty drive, it was a major disappointment. The entire lakefront appears to be privately owned. We saw only one small "park" (if you can call it that) with one picnic table but there was no place to park with the trailer. The other thing we noticed is that the lake appears to have a lot of weed growth near the shore so it did not look like good swimming in any event. So we just drove around the top of the lake eventually arriving at the RV park near Kelseyville. Disappointment number two. The RV park looked like a dark, dank place out of a Stephen King novel. We drove in and right away noticed that the pool was closed and the water's edge looked pretty dirty with sludge from boats docked there. We turned a 180 and drove away. Since the day had been a relatively short drive (going around the top of the lake had added only an hour or so) we headed west over highway 175 which is a euphemism for "the windiest up and down country road, with sharp, deep dropoffs you will likely ever see". We soon realized why they had posted a sign telling folks with longer vehicles to not even think about going over this highway.
However, once again, the old proverb about good things come to those who wait (or something like that) came into play as we ended up at the Cloverdale/Healdsburg KOA which is up in the mountains above the wine country. We have stayed here a couple of times previously and had forgotten how beautiful it is up there. Not to mention the fact that the KOA folks have added a fabulous pool since we were last there. We stayed two nights in a 99% empty campground. It was great with fabulous weather and clear bright night skies with kerzillions of stars on display. We decided we would likely stay here again for a couple of more nights on our way back home later in November.
On wednesday we did a day trip into Calistoga. Wednesday was birthday day for our friend Sabina, back in Calgary. To celebrate, on her behalf, we decided to try a "mud bath spa and massage".
It was a bit weird at first but it felt real good afterwards. On a previous holiday in the Czech Republic we did a "beer spa". Comparing the two we both decided that the beer spa was nicer. Kris suggested that the mud spa was what it would be like if you were sitting in a giant cow pie.
Calistoga is about an hours drive from the KOA. The drive down highway 128 is very pretty as you go past vineyard after vineyard. The number of vineyards almost seems endless.
On Thursday we drove all of about 50 miles south to Petaluma as the last stopover before hitting San Francisco. On the way we stopped at the Francis Ford Coppola winery for a very fine lunch and pretty cool walkthrough of the displays of his films etc.
Friday was a short drive across the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco where we set up the trailer in the Candlestick RV Park for the next week while Kris attends her haute couture sewing class.
| Back to Week 2 | On to Week 4 |
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Week 2 - Walla Walla Washington to Oroville California
Our general travel route for this week...
We've also added more pics to our photo album for this trip.
Leaving Walla Walla we did a monstrous 45 minute drive to Pendleton Oregon where we stayed a couple of nights.
Pendleton is home of the Pendleton Woollen Mills. Of course we had to stop and shop for a new blanket. One of the sales ladies asked if we have ever been in the store before? Kris replied "I know exactly how many times I have been in the store... I have a blanket for each visit". After this visit we now have 3 beautiful Pendleton blankets, although this one was bought specifically to beautify the little trailer. They also offer a tour of the mill facilities. This short 1/2 hour tour is very interesting and well worth the time. The high speed computerized carding, spinning and weaving machines they now have are mind boggling. They now weave full size blankets in the 16 minute range.
While in Pendleton we also did the Pendleton Underground Tour which, like the woollen mill tour, is well worth the time. The tour guides do a great job as they lead you through the underground tunnels, the old Chinese jails, gambling parlors, then back up to the street and into a well preserved historic brothel building overlooking Main Street.
Luckily (we think) we arrived in Pendleton a week before the annual "roundup and rodeo". This year marks the 100th anniversary and it is billed as "party time". The town normally has a population in the 17,000 range but they were expecting an influx of 80,000-100,000 visitors for roundup. We asked some folks where all those people would stay. One guy said that if "we saw a crack in the sidewalk that wasn't occupied then grab it". Actually schools close so their parking lots become RV parks as well as local farmers' fields and any other spot that can be rented out. The rodeo motto is "let'r buck" which seems to apply to all activities including the invitation to an open bar and karaoke at 7 AM. Really.
For our evening entertainment, in Pendleton, we retired to the Hamley Historic Saloon, a beautifully restored old building downtown. Very cool atmosphere. Not many folks this week but our server told us that you would not be able to move in there from morning until late night once round-up started. The place made us wonder why we don't see this type of restored building in Calgary as part of it's western heritage. Newer bars just don't cut it in the same way.
From Pendleton we headed south into eastern Oregon. The drive from Pendleton to Burns then onto Lakeview Oregon, just north of the California border, was just fabulous. The scenery varies from high plains desert to a variety of thick forests including fir, pine, and juniper. Between Pendleton and Burns we commented that this would be a great place to train for the Tour d'France Bicycle race. It is up and down like a yoyo with quite high summits. Most of the summits are in the 4500 to 5000 foot level. North of Lakeview there are monstrous lava mountains (the Abert Rim is the offical name of the geological feature) with the diffent layers of lava flow easily counted. One of the tourist info spots we stopped at indicated that the layers have been counted up to 42 deep with the mountains thrust over 2500 above the valley floors. Really neat to see.
Just north of Lakeview is the "old perpetual Lakeview Geyser" which we were told "shoots plumes, of 200 degree water, 60 feet into the air every 90 seconds. We had to see this... but it was not so perpetual as they would like to think... no geyser... apparently the geyser went dry this summer, something it decides to do every once in a while. So no geyser viewing for us! The water table is so low that even huge Goose Lake just south of town is apparently on the verge of being totally dry.
Anyway, we arrived in Burns to a bit of a thunderstorm so we went off to find some dinner at one of the local eateries. Small country town but we found the "Meat Hook" restaurant. From the outside it looks like a divey little place but inside is a typical family restaurant with the typical combination of tables and booths. The difference in this family run place is the fantastic collection of agricultural show ribbons, they have won for their cattle, at shows all over the US as well as some from Canada, Mexico and Argentina. The food was great. Kris had a perfectly cooked steak and Brian had an excellent "philly cheese double chuck patty burger". The food was great with the total bill being $33 of which $22 was for a couple of glasses of very fine wine. We retired to a rainy night in the wee trailer and watched a couple of episodes of Battlestar Galactica (the series we are watching on this trip).
We woke to a chilly but sunny morning in Burns and headed off to Lakeview. In Lakeview we stayed at the Junipers Reservoir RV Park. This park, at first glance, makes one wonder where you are going. Turning off the main road onto a gravel farm road it seems that you are headed for some farmer's back 40. However after a mile or so, you go over a rise and see this park nestled up against a beautiful juniper forest. The sky was brilliant blue and as the sun set the different colors on the distant mountains was really cool to see. The night sky was perfectly clear and the stars were out in abundance and the smell of the junipers in the cool night air (the temp dropped a couple of degrees below freezing) was very pleasant. Lakeview is also known as the "tallest town in Oregon". It sits at 4800 feet.
So, all in all, the eastern side of Oregon is pretty cool. Very little traffic this time of year making the drive very pleasant with just fabulous scenery and great small towns. This route is definitely a fine alternative to always going up and down the coast highway which, in and of itself, is darn hard to beat. No jackaplopes thus far, however.
On to California, where the weather continued to be clear and warm (damn warm)...
Our first night in California was just outside of McArthur and Fall River, a couple of towns only 4 miles apart and totalling only about 3,000 folks. We drove up to the McArthur-Burney State Park to see the water falls. You can see the water pouring out of the different lava layers. They say it pours over a million gallons a day. Neat sight to see.
In Fall River there is a Shell station which gave us a good laugh...
... get your gas, bullets and booze here... always a classic and all in one easy stop.
The next day was a short trip distance wise. Only about 100 miles south to Chester but what a drive. We went through the Lassen Volcano National Park which takes a windy road up past the old volcano to the 8600 foot summit. The views along the way are spectacular with lots of photo opportunities. Great visitor centres at each end of the park road.
Arriving in Chester we found that we just happen to hit town on the day of the 25th annual Chester antique car show. WOW. After ditching the wee trailer we headed back into town and spent a good part of the late afternoon viewing these fabulously restored cars from as far back as the 1930's. There were about 150 beautiful old cars to ogle.
Our last travel day for this week was around the east side of Lake Almanor (Chester is on the north end) then south on the scenic highway 70, also known as the Feather River Scenic Biway, to end the week at Oroville and it's 34 C temperature. Although no where near as dramatic as the drive through Lassen Park, this is a very pretty drive through heavily forested areas and on into the deep canyons as the route follows the Feather River.
Once we signed in at the Oroville KOA the first order of business was to hit the pool. Later, after a drive around the small town we went back to the KOA and decided to wander over to the nearby Feather River Casino since the KOA had given us some $2.00 off coupons for the "fine buffet". Figuring it was going to be a bit cheesy we decided, what the heck, let's give it a try. After a couple of glasses of wine and some video poker in one of the casino lounge/bar areas, where we managed to win $100, we headed to the buffet and for all of $18 between the two of us we had what turned out to be a pretty good buffet dinner.
We've also added more pics to our photo album for this trip.
Leaving Walla Walla we did a monstrous 45 minute drive to Pendleton Oregon where we stayed a couple of nights.
Pendleton is home of the Pendleton Woollen Mills. Of course we had to stop and shop for a new blanket. One of the sales ladies asked if we have ever been in the store before? Kris replied "I know exactly how many times I have been in the store... I have a blanket for each visit". After this visit we now have 3 beautiful Pendleton blankets, although this one was bought specifically to beautify the little trailer. They also offer a tour of the mill facilities. This short 1/2 hour tour is very interesting and well worth the time. The high speed computerized carding, spinning and weaving machines they now have are mind boggling. They now weave full size blankets in the 16 minute range.
While in Pendleton we also did the Pendleton Underground Tour which, like the woollen mill tour, is well worth the time. The tour guides do a great job as they lead you through the underground tunnels, the old Chinese jails, gambling parlors, then back up to the street and into a well preserved historic brothel building overlooking Main Street.
Luckily (we think) we arrived in Pendleton a week before the annual "roundup and rodeo". This year marks the 100th anniversary and it is billed as "party time". The town normally has a population in the 17,000 range but they were expecting an influx of 80,000-100,000 visitors for roundup. We asked some folks where all those people would stay. One guy said that if "we saw a crack in the sidewalk that wasn't occupied then grab it". Actually schools close so their parking lots become RV parks as well as local farmers' fields and any other spot that can be rented out. The rodeo motto is "let'r buck" which seems to apply to all activities including the invitation to an open bar and karaoke at 7 AM. Really.
For our evening entertainment, in Pendleton, we retired to the Hamley Historic Saloon, a beautifully restored old building downtown. Very cool atmosphere. Not many folks this week but our server told us that you would not be able to move in there from morning until late night once round-up started. The place made us wonder why we don't see this type of restored building in Calgary as part of it's western heritage. Newer bars just don't cut it in the same way.
From Pendleton we headed south into eastern Oregon. The drive from Pendleton to Burns then onto Lakeview Oregon, just north of the California border, was just fabulous. The scenery varies from high plains desert to a variety of thick forests including fir, pine, and juniper. Between Pendleton and Burns we commented that this would be a great place to train for the Tour d'France Bicycle race. It is up and down like a yoyo with quite high summits. Most of the summits are in the 4500 to 5000 foot level. North of Lakeview there are monstrous lava mountains (the Abert Rim is the offical name of the geological feature) with the diffent layers of lava flow easily counted. One of the tourist info spots we stopped at indicated that the layers have been counted up to 42 deep with the mountains thrust over 2500 above the valley floors. Really neat to see.
Just north of Lakeview is the "old perpetual Lakeview Geyser" which we were told "shoots plumes, of 200 degree water, 60 feet into the air every 90 seconds. We had to see this... but it was not so perpetual as they would like to think... no geyser... apparently the geyser went dry this summer, something it decides to do every once in a while. So no geyser viewing for us! The water table is so low that even huge Goose Lake just south of town is apparently on the verge of being totally dry.
Anyway, we arrived in Burns to a bit of a thunderstorm so we went off to find some dinner at one of the local eateries. Small country town but we found the "Meat Hook" restaurant. From the outside it looks like a divey little place but inside is a typical family restaurant with the typical combination of tables and booths. The difference in this family run place is the fantastic collection of agricultural show ribbons, they have won for their cattle, at shows all over the US as well as some from Canada, Mexico and Argentina. The food was great. Kris had a perfectly cooked steak and Brian had an excellent "philly cheese double chuck patty burger". The food was great with the total bill being $33 of which $22 was for a couple of glasses of very fine wine. We retired to a rainy night in the wee trailer and watched a couple of episodes of Battlestar Galactica (the series we are watching on this trip).
We woke to a chilly but sunny morning in Burns and headed off to Lakeview. In Lakeview we stayed at the Junipers Reservoir RV Park. This park, at first glance, makes one wonder where you are going. Turning off the main road onto a gravel farm road it seems that you are headed for some farmer's back 40. However after a mile or so, you go over a rise and see this park nestled up against a beautiful juniper forest. The sky was brilliant blue and as the sun set the different colors on the distant mountains was really cool to see. The night sky was perfectly clear and the stars were out in abundance and the smell of the junipers in the cool night air (the temp dropped a couple of degrees below freezing) was very pleasant. Lakeview is also known as the "tallest town in Oregon". It sits at 4800 feet.
So, all in all, the eastern side of Oregon is pretty cool. Very little traffic this time of year making the drive very pleasant with just fabulous scenery and great small towns. This route is definitely a fine alternative to always going up and down the coast highway which, in and of itself, is darn hard to beat. No jackaplopes thus far, however.
On to California, where the weather continued to be clear and warm (damn warm)...
Our first night in California was just outside of McArthur and Fall River, a couple of towns only 4 miles apart and totalling only about 3,000 folks. We drove up to the McArthur-Burney State Park to see the water falls. You can see the water pouring out of the different lava layers. They say it pours over a million gallons a day. Neat sight to see.
In Fall River there is a Shell station which gave us a good laugh...
... get your gas, bullets and booze here... always a classic and all in one easy stop.
The next day was a short trip distance wise. Only about 100 miles south to Chester but what a drive. We went through the Lassen Volcano National Park which takes a windy road up past the old volcano to the 8600 foot summit. The views along the way are spectacular with lots of photo opportunities. Great visitor centres at each end of the park road.
Arriving in Chester we found that we just happen to hit town on the day of the 25th annual Chester antique car show. WOW. After ditching the wee trailer we headed back into town and spent a good part of the late afternoon viewing these fabulously restored cars from as far back as the 1930's. There were about 150 beautiful old cars to ogle.
Our last travel day for this week was around the east side of Lake Almanor (Chester is on the north end) then south on the scenic highway 70, also known as the Feather River Scenic Biway, to end the week at Oroville and it's 34 C temperature. Although no where near as dramatic as the drive through Lassen Park, this is a very pretty drive through heavily forested areas and on into the deep canyons as the route follows the Feather River.
Once we signed in at the Oroville KOA the first order of business was to hit the pool. Later, after a drive around the small town we went back to the KOA and decided to wander over to the nearby Feather River Casino since the KOA had given us some $2.00 off coupons for the "fine buffet". Figuring it was going to be a bit cheesy we decided, what the heck, let's give it a try. After a couple of glasses of wine and some video poker in one of the casino lounge/bar areas, where we managed to win $100, we headed to the buffet and for all of $18 between the two of us we had what turned out to be a pretty good buffet dinner.
| Back to Week 1 | On to Week 3 |
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Week 1 - Calgary Alberta to Walla Walla Washington
Our general travel route for this week...
We've also added the initial pics to our photo album for this trip.
We left Calgary on Tuesday so this will be a short week (we try to do Sunday thru Saturday in each post).
Before leaving on Tuesday we finished up getting ready to go. The activities including doing that one last load in the dishwasher so all dishes would be clean when we get back. Well, MURPHY'S LAW... didn't the stupid dishwasher pick this time to break down mid-cycle. It was betrayed only by a wisp of smoke and the tell-tale odor of "something seems to be burning". We busted into it (aka interrupted the cycle) by opening the door, leaving us with a steaming set of dishes and a dishwasher with an inch of water in the bottom. Thereafter the darn thing decided that it would no longer speak to us. Pondering our options we ultimately decided that the "head in the sand" option sounded the best. We turned off the circuit breaker to the dishwasher, manually drained the water from the bottom, closed the door and said "there, you betrayer. Take that, we'll take care of you when we get home!".
On that note, we headed off for a night in Canmore, all of about 100 kms away. We stayed in the Spring Creek rv park. Canmore is said to be on the verge of being over run by bunnies. Judging by the number of bunnies at the rv park, we would conclude this to be somewhat true. We were careful, having seen a lot of Monty Python movies, not to make the mistake of underestimating the wee bunnies.
Since we were within walking distance of downtown Canmore, we wandered over to Murietta's for a couple of glasses of wine and a nice pizza before heading back to the trailer, fixing dinner, enjoying the mountain scenery and calling it a night as it was a tad on the cooler side.
Wednesday we headed off with our destination being Fort Steele BC. The weather cleared and it was a beautiful evening. However, just as we started to bake some chicken in our toaster oven, the skies, like our dishwasher, betrayed us and opened up to a fairly heavy rain. This required some innovative roofing solutions for the toaster oven...
... but the rain abated quickly and we had a very nice dinner under the stars (with a few clouds).
Waking to a chilly heavy fog and a ton of dew, Thursday we left Fort Steele and headed south through Cranbrook to the US border where we had our lone tomato summarily confiscated because we could not "definitively prove" that it came from the USA. Oh well, all in all the border folks were pretty easy to get along with. On into Idaho. After a brief stop in Bonners Ferry and another in Sandpoint, we stayed in Coeur d'Alene at the Blackwell Island RV park at the head waters to the Spokane River right on Lake Coeur d'Alene. We have driven many times from Calgary to Spokane for long weekends but have never given Coeur d'Alene a second thought. That was a mistake. What a wonderful spot. It does look like our "good weather mojo" from our last trip has returned. We had fabulous weather for two days in Coeur d'Alene and Spokane, strolled around downtown, enjoyed a very nice wine bar and the rv park on the water was just great. Nice place!
It was "Pig out in the Park" days at Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane. Much like the "Taste of Calgary" where there are many foodie vendors with a wide array of ethnic tastes with at least one recalling our last trip through Texas...
Saturday we drove south of Spokane to Walla Walla (yes the sweet onion place). The scenery along the way was fabulous with vast rich agricultural areas stretching to the horizon in many places. Along the way we stopped at the Horn School Rest Stop which was the first highway rest stop constructed in Washington State. Way back in 1967... and the restrooms are still very clean! We also passed the Steptoe Battlefield monument. This was one of the last significant battles between the North West Indian tribes and the US Army.
In Walla Walla it was country fair days. Very cool "real" country fair not yet lost to big commercialism. Still lots of 4-H club exhibits and lots of fun school projects on display. The one pictured below was very cute. You likely can't read the captions but left to right, top to bottom, they read like a poem (you can also click the picture to enlarge it and see the cute pictures and captions)...
Since Walla Walla is a great wine growing region we spent our two evenings at a couple of different places sampling very nice wine, some excellent pizza and a great cheese sampler plate. We also took in the Sunday morning Walla Walla Farmer's Market. A nice small market with a big name attraction... so this is where Elvis has been hiding out...
We've also added the initial pics to our photo album for this trip.
We left Calgary on Tuesday so this will be a short week (we try to do Sunday thru Saturday in each post).
Before leaving on Tuesday we finished up getting ready to go. The activities including doing that one last load in the dishwasher so all dishes would be clean when we get back. Well, MURPHY'S LAW... didn't the stupid dishwasher pick this time to break down mid-cycle. It was betrayed only by a wisp of smoke and the tell-tale odor of "something seems to be burning". We busted into it (aka interrupted the cycle) by opening the door, leaving us with a steaming set of dishes and a dishwasher with an inch of water in the bottom. Thereafter the darn thing decided that it would no longer speak to us. Pondering our options we ultimately decided that the "head in the sand" option sounded the best. We turned off the circuit breaker to the dishwasher, manually drained the water from the bottom, closed the door and said "there, you betrayer. Take that, we'll take care of you when we get home!".
On that note, we headed off for a night in Canmore, all of about 100 kms away. We stayed in the Spring Creek rv park. Canmore is said to be on the verge of being over run by bunnies. Judging by the number of bunnies at the rv park, we would conclude this to be somewhat true. We were careful, having seen a lot of Monty Python movies, not to make the mistake of underestimating the wee bunnies.
Since we were within walking distance of downtown Canmore, we wandered over to Murietta's for a couple of glasses of wine and a nice pizza before heading back to the trailer, fixing dinner, enjoying the mountain scenery and calling it a night as it was a tad on the cooler side.
Wednesday we headed off with our destination being Fort Steele BC. The weather cleared and it was a beautiful evening. However, just as we started to bake some chicken in our toaster oven, the skies, like our dishwasher, betrayed us and opened up to a fairly heavy rain. This required some innovative roofing solutions for the toaster oven...
... but the rain abated quickly and we had a very nice dinner under the stars (with a few clouds).
Waking to a chilly heavy fog and a ton of dew, Thursday we left Fort Steele and headed south through Cranbrook to the US border where we had our lone tomato summarily confiscated because we could not "definitively prove" that it came from the USA. Oh well, all in all the border folks were pretty easy to get along with. On into Idaho. After a brief stop in Bonners Ferry and another in Sandpoint, we stayed in Coeur d'Alene at the Blackwell Island RV park at the head waters to the Spokane River right on Lake Coeur d'Alene. We have driven many times from Calgary to Spokane for long weekends but have never given Coeur d'Alene a second thought. That was a mistake. What a wonderful spot. It does look like our "good weather mojo" from our last trip has returned. We had fabulous weather for two days in Coeur d'Alene and Spokane, strolled around downtown, enjoyed a very nice wine bar and the rv park on the water was just great. Nice place!
It was "Pig out in the Park" days at Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane. Much like the "Taste of Calgary" where there are many foodie vendors with a wide array of ethnic tastes with at least one recalling our last trip through Texas...
Saturday we drove south of Spokane to Walla Walla (yes the sweet onion place). The scenery along the way was fabulous with vast rich agricultural areas stretching to the horizon in many places. Along the way we stopped at the Horn School Rest Stop which was the first highway rest stop constructed in Washington State. Way back in 1967... and the restrooms are still very clean! We also passed the Steptoe Battlefield monument. This was one of the last significant battles between the North West Indian tribes and the US Army.
In Walla Walla it was country fair days. Very cool "real" country fair not yet lost to big commercialism. Still lots of 4-H club exhibits and lots of fun school projects on display. The one pictured below was very cute. You likely can't read the captions but left to right, top to bottom, they read like a poem (you can also click the picture to enlarge it and see the cute pictures and captions)...
I am a seed. Just a tiny ol' seed... looking for a place to grow.
Look soil... that will do... yippee and yahoo.
I will sleep and sleep until I sprout. Then I will grow out out out.
Hooray, I am finally a sprout. On my way to being a cucumber no doubt.
Oh my Oh my I am almost done. I am on my way to have some fun.
I am now a full cucumber on my way to a salad. This is the end of my little ballad.
Look soil... that will do... yippee and yahoo.
I will sleep and sleep until I sprout. Then I will grow out out out.
Hooray, I am finally a sprout. On my way to being a cucumber no doubt.
Oh my Oh my I am almost done. I am on my way to have some fun.
I am now a full cucumber on my way to a salad. This is the end of my little ballad.
Since Walla Walla is a great wine growing region we spent our two evenings at a couple of different places sampling very nice wine, some excellent pizza and a great cheese sampler plate. We also took in the Sunday morning Walla Walla Farmer's Market. A nice small market with a big name attraction... so this is where Elvis has been hiding out...
| On to Week 2 |
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Welcome
Getting ready to head off on our next adventure at the end of August. No Texas BBQ this time. San Francisco beckons so mostly sea food this time... stay tuned for our "San Francisco Road Trip".
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Week 14 - Comox BC to Calgary Alberta
Our general travel route for this week...
We've also added the final pics, for this trip, to our photo album.
Monday was a day for getting our Comox car (we have one in storage there in anticipation of when we move out to the coast) worked on. The passenger side front door latch decided to bust and did not work from the inside. Not safe! Took a couple of tries but the folks at the Ford dealer did get if fixed.
The rest of Monday was mostly driving around the Comox area checking out places currently for sale. The neatest thing though, recall photo from last week where we saw 3 bald eagles sitting in a tree, well this time we saw 7 (yup seven), in that same tree, but we didn't have the camera with us :-(.
After the masses cleared out from the campground at Comox lake it was much more peaceful. In the evenings we sat on the beach with a campfire beside our campsite. Much more peaceful.
All in all, a lovely spot, beach was nice and filled with young kids having a great time. Asked our neighbour camper if he survived the day and all kids were accounted for. He smiled, took a swig of his (well deserved) beer and said "yeah, all accounted for along with a few more grey hairs for me".
As we say, a lovely spot, but would we stay here again? Hard to say. Scenery great, beach great, camp spots small, washrooms get a very low score, a bit grimy but mostly because not enough of them. Two washrooms/showers for 50 overloaded campsites! Lineups on long weekend. Not too bad afterwards.
Tuesday we headed for the ferry at Nanaimo. Being midweek, we naively thought there would be no problem getting on the next ferry after we arrived. HAH! We arrived at about 11:40 to be told that the 12:50 ferry was full and we "might" make the 3:10 one. If not the 3:10 then the 5:20 one... yikes. So we had to sit and wait but luckily we made the 3:10 ferry...
... so only a 3.5 hour wait. Note to selves... make a reservation next time!
We stayed with our friend Marian in Vancouver for a couple of days. We left the wee trailer at a RV park in Burnaby just off the Trans-Canada highway. Although it was a tad expensive just to leave it there, it was safe, secure and easy to get to when we left Vancouver.
Thursday we headed down to English Bay for a coffee and just to sit and take in the wonderful atmosphere of the morning looking across the bay at the downtown area and up to the mountains. A great place to sit and people watch, as well, with lots of young families with kids playing in the water and kids of all ages cycling and strolling the wide path along the bay.
We followed that up with a visit to Granville Island and a terrific lunch at "Go Fish" right at the marina. Perhaps the last fish taco of this trip, and most excellent it was, as usual, for Go Fish.
Friday we headed for Kamloops. There was much construction on the Trans-Canada around Abbotsford including two major interchanges one right after the other. Between the two, they managed to back traffic up for many miles. It took us over 2.5 hours to get from the Port Mann bridge past the chaos (Mapquest shows one hour from the Port Mann bridge to Chilliwack, well past Abbotsford)!
Since we decided to basically head home, but not too fast, we stayed one night in Kamloops, one night in Revelstoke and one night in Radium Hot Springs.
Early Sunday morning, at the KOA in Revelstoke, a RV pulled into the site beside us. The folks were clearly getting set to cheer for the Netherlands in the World Cup Final. Mom, Dad and Kids were all decked out in orange. They couldn't believe they planned their first ever trip to Canada at exactly the same time "their team" was going to play in the World Cup Final. Kris had the brilliant idea of the answer to the question "what are we going to do with the bright orange rally hair bands we got at the Giants game in San Franciscos?" (recall pic of our game, in San Francisco, where the Giants gave out the orange rally hair bands). One of the little boys put one on immediately but the other little guy was a bit shy so the totally bald Dad wore the other one....
We headed out from the KOA just as the final game got underway. We listened to the game on CBC radio, but it soon disappeared as we drove farther into the mountains. Soon... nada, no radio signal... we had to revert to listening to our ipod songs until we got close to Golden where CBC came to life again at which time the game was just ending regular time. We did get to listen to the overtime period to hear the Spanish team end up victorious. Not being able to listen to the whole thing appears to be a good ad for satellite radio.
Driving from Radium to Banff, the scenery is spectacular. Throughout our trip, we have often commented on how fabulous and beautiful scenery in other places has been. Sometimes we forget just how dramatic and spectacular the scenery can be here, so close to home.
About the time we neared the Alberta border, our great weather mojo totally went down the tubes. We ran into a torrent of rain with some hail for many miles along the way.
We had planned to stop at the Kootenay Park Lodge for lunch so when we entered the park we asked the ranger/ticket person..."We plan to stop only for lunch at the Kootenay Park Lodge. Is the lodge restaurant open?". Her reply... "Yes it's open"... so we gladly paid the $19.60 park entrance fee. Note...The fee is only required to be paid if you stop in the park otherwise you can drive straight through on the Trans-Canada highway, with no stops, fee free. Since we had paid the fee, we stopped at a viewpoint (as per pic above) but when we got to the lodge, the restaurant was closed for lunch. Only open for breakfast and dinner. RATS... so, since we had paid the park entrance fee, we stopped and used the restoom. Essentially, it comes down to likely being the most expensive pay toilets we've ever been in!
We stopped for lunch in Canmore. This turned out to be a good thing as it took a couple of hours. Later we ended up arriving in Calgary about an hour or so after a humongous hail storm swept through the city. Dodged a major bullet on that one.
Anyway, back home after 3 months and 7 days away.
Total distance covered from/to the storage lot where we keep our wee trailer was 19,950 kms. Factoring in the distance from our condo in Calgary to the storage lot to start the trip and back again, after the trip, we put in exactly 20,000 kms on this grand adventure.
We've also added the final pics, for this trip, to our photo album.
Monday was a day for getting our Comox car (we have one in storage there in anticipation of when we move out to the coast) worked on. The passenger side front door latch decided to bust and did not work from the inside. Not safe! Took a couple of tries but the folks at the Ford dealer did get if fixed.
The rest of Monday was mostly driving around the Comox area checking out places currently for sale. The neatest thing though, recall photo from last week where we saw 3 bald eagles sitting in a tree, well this time we saw 7 (yup seven), in that same tree, but we didn't have the camera with us :-(.
After the masses cleared out from the campground at Comox lake it was much more peaceful. In the evenings we sat on the beach with a campfire beside our campsite. Much more peaceful.
All in all, a lovely spot, beach was nice and filled with young kids having a great time. Asked our neighbour camper if he survived the day and all kids were accounted for. He smiled, took a swig of his (well deserved) beer and said "yeah, all accounted for along with a few more grey hairs for me".
As we say, a lovely spot, but would we stay here again? Hard to say. Scenery great, beach great, camp spots small, washrooms get a very low score, a bit grimy but mostly because not enough of them. Two washrooms/showers for 50 overloaded campsites! Lineups on long weekend. Not too bad afterwards.
Tuesday we headed for the ferry at Nanaimo. Being midweek, we naively thought there would be no problem getting on the next ferry after we arrived. HAH! We arrived at about 11:40 to be told that the 12:50 ferry was full and we "might" make the 3:10 one. If not the 3:10 then the 5:20 one... yikes. So we had to sit and wait but luckily we made the 3:10 ferry...
We stayed with our friend Marian in Vancouver for a couple of days. We left the wee trailer at a RV park in Burnaby just off the Trans-Canada highway. Although it was a tad expensive just to leave it there, it was safe, secure and easy to get to when we left Vancouver.
Thursday we headed down to English Bay for a coffee and just to sit and take in the wonderful atmosphere of the morning looking across the bay at the downtown area and up to the mountains. A great place to sit and people watch, as well, with lots of young families with kids playing in the water and kids of all ages cycling and strolling the wide path along the bay.
We followed that up with a visit to Granville Island and a terrific lunch at "Go Fish" right at the marina. Perhaps the last fish taco of this trip, and most excellent it was, as usual, for Go Fish.
Friday we headed for Kamloops. There was much construction on the Trans-Canada around Abbotsford including two major interchanges one right after the other. Between the two, they managed to back traffic up for many miles. It took us over 2.5 hours to get from the Port Mann bridge past the chaos (Mapquest shows one hour from the Port Mann bridge to Chilliwack, well past Abbotsford)!
Since we decided to basically head home, but not too fast, we stayed one night in Kamloops, one night in Revelstoke and one night in Radium Hot Springs.
Early Sunday morning, at the KOA in Revelstoke, a RV pulled into the site beside us. The folks were clearly getting set to cheer for the Netherlands in the World Cup Final. Mom, Dad and Kids were all decked out in orange. They couldn't believe they planned their first ever trip to Canada at exactly the same time "their team" was going to play in the World Cup Final. Kris had the brilliant idea of the answer to the question "what are we going to do with the bright orange rally hair bands we got at the Giants game in San Franciscos?" (recall pic of our game, in San Francisco, where the Giants gave out the orange rally hair bands). One of the little boys put one on immediately but the other little guy was a bit shy so the totally bald Dad wore the other one....
We headed out from the KOA just as the final game got underway. We listened to the game on CBC radio, but it soon disappeared as we drove farther into the mountains. Soon... nada, no radio signal... we had to revert to listening to our ipod songs until we got close to Golden where CBC came to life again at which time the game was just ending regular time. We did get to listen to the overtime period to hear the Spanish team end up victorious. Not being able to listen to the whole thing appears to be a good ad for satellite radio.
Driving from Radium to Banff, the scenery is spectacular. Throughout our trip, we have often commented on how fabulous and beautiful scenery in other places has been. Sometimes we forget just how dramatic and spectacular the scenery can be here, so close to home.
About the time we neared the Alberta border, our great weather mojo totally went down the tubes. We ran into a torrent of rain with some hail for many miles along the way.
We had planned to stop at the Kootenay Park Lodge for lunch so when we entered the park we asked the ranger/ticket person..."We plan to stop only for lunch at the Kootenay Park Lodge. Is the lodge restaurant open?". Her reply... "Yes it's open"... so we gladly paid the $19.60 park entrance fee. Note...The fee is only required to be paid if you stop in the park otherwise you can drive straight through on the Trans-Canada highway, with no stops, fee free. Since we had paid the fee, we stopped at a viewpoint (as per pic above) but when we got to the lodge, the restaurant was closed for lunch. Only open for breakfast and dinner. RATS... so, since we had paid the park entrance fee, we stopped and used the restoom. Essentially, it comes down to likely being the most expensive pay toilets we've ever been in!
We stopped for lunch in Canmore. This turned out to be a good thing as it took a couple of hours. Later we ended up arriving in Calgary about an hour or so after a humongous hail storm swept through the city. Dodged a major bullet on that one.
Anyway, back home after 3 months and 7 days away.
Total distance covered from/to the storage lot where we keep our wee trailer was 19,950 kms. Factoring in the distance from our condo in Calgary to the storage lot to start the trip and back again, after the trip, we put in exactly 20,000 kms on this grand adventure.
| Back to Week 13 |
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