Week 11 - Santa Cruz California to Fort Bragg California

Our general travel route for this week...

We've also added some more pics to our photo album. Most of them are of the Jellies at the Monterey Aquarium. The picture captioned as the "... sardine tank" is incorrect, it should be "... anchovy tank". We'll fix that later.

This was a week of a lot of rest. We spent 5 days at the KOA in Santa Cruz. A great spot with lots of trees and a good fire pit for the evening. It also seems that our jackalope craze has been replaced by a raccoon craze. We were visited by a raccoon at the RV park in San Francisco and again at the KOA in Santa Cruz. Creatures of opportunity they have found that campground areas can be places of easy pickin's. We make sure all is put away before retiring for the night. While Brian enjoyed a duck walking across his foot in San Antonio ... Kris nearly had a raccoon walking across her foot in Santa Cruz.

Monday was Carmel in the morning followed by the Monterey Aquarium in the afternoon. Carmel is quite twee with lots of galleries and upscale shops. A tad on the expensive side, but nice and compact and easy to wander around. The Monterey Aquarium is just such a neat place to go. Our favorites are the sea otters...

... and the jellies...

Tuesday was the biggie for me, Brian, to spend at Pebble Beach catching glimpses of some of the pros at the US Open during a practice round. The biggest of the biggies was Phil Mickelson...

The biggest of the Canadians was Mike Weir...

A whack of folks had congregated at the 17th tee to get a glimpse of "Tiger" but apparently he walked off the course after the 13th hole (must have seen some floozies heading for the clubhouse ;-o ). So joining a group of "autograph hounds" between the 16th and 17th holes, I collected a bunch of autographs. For some, everyone in the crowd would put their heads together and try to figure out exactly who it was that provided the autograph :-))) One guy we weren't sure about until somebody said... "oh him, he won the British Open a couple of years ago"... who knew? Anyway, lots of fun and finished with a Mike Weir autograph.

Our last day in Santa Cruz we toodled around the town, had lunch in a cute cafe and then headed for the beach. It was a bit late in the afternoon and we were debating whether to take the boogie board; maybe the water would be cold but the surf looked pretty good. As this was a State beach, there was a fee to get in and a nice ranger girl working in the kiosk. We asked about the water and the rip current (not wanting to freeze off any body parts or end up in Mexico). She said the rip was not too bad and as for the water temperature .... her words ...'What's your mil?" our mil???? mailing address?? military number?? tax rate?? not a clue. Turns out she was asking about the thickenss of our wetsuits. When we figured this out and told her our mill was nil - just bathing suits and rash guards her eyes got very round and she said "then its gonna be real cold". She was right - we splashed around in the surf for a bit, got soaked by a giant wave and retreated to the beach to sit on the sand in the sun.

Friday we headed up the coast to Petaluma, leaving the "Artichoke Center of the World" area for the former "Chicken Capital of the World". At one time Petaluma was the largest poultry producing place in the country. Most of that is gone along with most of the "hatcheries" but some old hatcheries and warehouses still stand and have been converted into some pretty cool apartments and other businesses along the river. We came across one funky little cafe where we had an excellent lunch then returned for their afternoon "extremely happy hour" for some wine and an appy of warm goat cheese with fresh stawberries and figs... very nice indeed!

Sunday we headed out to the coast #1 highway up to Fort Bragg. Huge dairy farms west of Petaluma out towards Bodega Bay. Going up the #1 highway, the "Shoreline Highway", is a beautiful drive and much nicer, albeit quite a bit slower than going up the 101, the "Coast Highway" which is inland and much more like a freeway. Note...Do not take the #1 highway if you are in any sort of hurry! The views are fabulous though...

In Fort Bragg we stayed at a very nice RV campground with lots of trees and space around us. Compare this picture from the one last week when we stayed in San Francisco...

Fort Bragg...

San Francisco...

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Back to Week 10

On to Week 12

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Week 10 - Valencia California to San Francisco/Santa Cruz California

Our general travel route for this week...

We've also added some more pics to our photo album.

This week was another week dictated by the MLB schedule. The Oakland A's were just finishing a home stand with an afternoon game on Thursday then were heading out of town for almost two weeks so we decided to see the Thursday game. That meant getting to San Francisco sometime Wednesday.

Monday morning we headed west to the coast highway 101 through some old historic ranch and farming areas. Stopped at one roadside fruit/vegetable stand and picked up a few things including a bottle of olives which Kris describes as possibly the best ever! Also saw the craziest fruit stand sign ever ..... avocados 10 for $1. The road to heaven is paved with guacamole.

Monday we stayed at Pismo Beach at an RV park right on the ocean. They claimed that all spots "are back in only", but as we drove to our spot we noticed that the spot directly behind ours was not occupied so a quick whip through it and over a small grassy knoll and voila, a "pull through"... only a small (ok, fairly good sized) divot where our trailer jack hit the grass as we went over the grassy knoll. We steamed up some salmon and had an excellent evening sitting outside the wee trailer. We did get a serious glaring-at by the security guy and the nosy fellow across the way that Brian kept calling 'Mr Neighbourhood Watch' (Mr NW). Another fellow was trying (without much sucess) to back his trailer in and Mr NW offered to give directions. You could have sold tickets; Jerry Seinfeld should be so funny. While Mr NW yelled directions, the driver totally ignored his "back straight in!!" directive, driver cranks the wheel far to one side, ever edging himself closer and closer to the power box and water faucet. Since we had just received the 'glaring', we felt quite sympathetic - only a sadistic bugger designs an RV park with only back-in sites (or a fool who likes to replace power boxes and severed water lines on a regular basis.)

Tuesday we drove highway 1 up through Big Sur to just south of Santa Cruz where we stayed at the Santa Cruz/Monterrey KOA. We first stayed at this KOA 35+ years ago in our small tent and have since stayed there in their camping cabins. It is a very nice campground and is conveniently located to all things Monterey, Carmel, Santa Cruz etc. The drive up the coast highway 1 is very windy and narrow. They advise no long trailers etc north of San Simeon and for very good reason... the hairpin curves high up on the cliffs are very tight indeed. We were stopped at 4 places where the road was being repaired, from washouts or landslides, and was down to one lane. Considering the distance, it turned out to be a long day.

Since we were on a mission to get to San Francisco, Wednesday morning we left early but stopped in Castroville (Artichoke Center of the World) at the "Giant Artichoke" restaurant for a breakfast comprised mainly of, what else, artichokes, then onto the 101 freeway to San Francisco.

We stayed in SF for the rest of the week (4 nights). There is a RV park right across the road from Candlestick Park.

This park is sort of like a Walmart parking lot in that many RVs are crammed into narrow parking stalls. see if you can spot the wee trailer from Canada in this pic...

... but this park is very conveniently located, is clean, and they provide a shuttle bus ($12 a person return) to downtown which is very convenient. We took the shuttle in to downtown, then took BART over to Oakland to see the game on Thursday. After the game, did some downtown SF stuff including dinner at Pizza Inferno (a favorite place) at the corner of Sutter and Filmore then shuttle back to the park... nice!

Oakland beat the Angels by a score of 6-1. That settles it. The home teams now have clinched our travel series.

Must say, of all the ball parks we've been in so far, Oakland's is the grimiest and frankly the least inviting (maybe that's a statement on Oakland itself). The concourse and certainly the area where we sat could use a real good steam cleaning. There are many ways to provide a walkway from the BART station to the Coloseum but the powers that be chose to build a narrow chain link wire lined walkway with razor wire over the gates... funneling towards and away from the park is like being in a herd of cattle. Guess there's a good reason the A's have been lobbying for a new park for some time. It just looks like the Coloseum has not had the pride of ownership that, say, Dodger Stadium has had. Maybe that comes with competing interests with both the A's and the Raiders calling the place home and neither of them owning the place outright. Or maybe Oakland is just a pit.

That said, the playing field looked great and we had great seats. The crowd was very small in number (maybe that's part of the issue) and they have all the top seating levels totally closed and covered with tarps. Maybe that makes the place not look so empty on television since you can't see all those empty seats. One thing though is that the A's seem to have a very loyal, if not small, fan base. Many, mostly older, folks decked out in their serious A's jerseys and hats with many pins etc. One would have to say that if those folks were fans in the 70's when Oakland won 3 straight World Series then they have seen the best of the best of all time. They likely yearn for those days again.

Friday was a driving around San Francisco day with some serious shopping thrown in for good luck. We packed a lunch and stopped at Washington Park on the top of the hill just off Filmore. Had a great view from our "table".

Friday night we had the pleasure of watching Tim Lincecum pitch a great game in a Giants 6-2 win over the visiting Oakland A's. Another win for the home team. Friday was crazy "orange" day so they gave all fans an orange "rally wig" polyester thingie, which on a relatively warm night was way too hot and shed way too much. BUT HEY!!!

This game was also the first sellout we have seen. Apparently we were lucky to get two seats together. We did though and they were excellent. Up high between third base and home plate. Home teams now lead our travel series 7-2 with 6 straight wins. We are thinking about selling our "attendance services" to all the MLB teams since our presence appears to bode well for the home teams.

Saturday was another San Francisco shopping and driving around day. Went to the Cliff House for breakfast. Always a treat with great views, great food... can get crowded though.

Sunday we headed back to the Monterey Peninsula. We found out that the US Open Golf Championship was being played at Pebble Beach. Championship rounds were sold out but Brian got a ticket for a practice round next Tuesday. Wanted to pick up the entrance ticket on Sunday before the crowds got too overwhelming. So, for the week, we actually ended up in Santa Cruz.

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Back to Week 9

On to Week 11

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Week 9 - San Diego California to Valencia California

Our general travel route for this week...

We've also added some more pics to our photo album.

After the pandemonium at the KOA on Sunday we seriously considered leaving San Diego on Tuesday rather than waiting until Wednesday. However the holiday crowd thinned out pretty early on Monday and the place seemed to revert to a more calmer state. We left the KOA fairly early Monday morning with the intent of going to the San Diego zoo. We should have figured out that a holiday Monday at the zoo was going to be just that... a zoo! By the time we got there, the huge parking lot was mostly full and the lineups to get through the ticket entrances were long and full of many young kids and many strollers etc. We decided the $37 entrance fee each would be better spent on a future visit when we might go on a non-holiday weekend. Instead we did a drive around Fiesta Island which was really an eye-opener for us. It is a terrific outdoor recreation area in the middle of a large population metropolitan city. Very nice indeed.

We returned to the KOA early in the afternoon to find many folks had departed, so we decided that we would stay the planned third night. We then headed off to catch the "trolley", in Chula Vista, to go into downtown San Diego to Petco Field to catch the Padres take on the NY Mets. Interesting to note that the trolley cars appear to be the exact same cars as used on the Calgary LRT system. Nice easy and relatively quick ride dropped us right outside Petco and only a block or so from the downtown historic Gaslamp district. Gaslamp is full of restaurants and interesting shops and does really bustle prior to a Padres game.

Petco field is another really nice ball park. The design incorporated at least one historic warehouse building. Must have been a bit of an architectural challenge for that but it does look really neat.

The ball game itself was a bit of a blowout. It started in the bottom of the second when Jerry Hairston hit a mammoth grand slam home run and didn't let up with the final score being 18-6 for the Padres. The NFL San Diego Chargers should hope to score that many points in a game. After commenting to ourselves that we could not recall ever seeing a grand slam in a MLB game, that's now 2 games in a row. Let's see what the Dodgers and Braves can do later this week!

After deciding to stay the extra day in San Diego, on Tuesday it was more of an explorative type day. We drove around the South Park area north of downtown and east of Balboa Park (see the June 2010 issue of Sunset Magazine which has a great article covering this area). A cluster of small bungalows in the Craftsman architecture style, well maintained, a funky street scene with cool shops and restaurants with lots of young folks. Seems like an area undergoing a kind of resurgence. Homes well maintained, nice yards etc etc. We ate lunch at the Station Tavern & Burger place. Excellent burgers. It is an old trolley turn around station turned into a restaurant. Pretty neat place.

We also found a large bead wholesale place which sold to the public. Of course more beads were purchased! What did you think?

Desiring to avoid driving Los Angeles freeways at night we decided we would kill time until next Sunday when the Dodgers hosted the Braves for a day game. We had 4 days to kill. We left San Diego and just headed up the historic coast 101 highway through a number of smallish beach communities and ended up in Oceanside for 3 days. What a great place. Each day started with grabbing a coffee (ok, yes a Starbucks) and going for a walk along the endless white sand beaches watching the early morning surfers.

The Pacific ocean here is not the same Pacific ocean we have in Canada. You can actually swim here without freezing any body parts off! We even ended up buying a couple of boogie boards and "rode the waves" without drowning. Ok, call it splashing around in the shallows, getting bowled over by some waves and getting sand in many places you don't want it, but it was lots of fun anyway.

Thursday in Oceanside is farmers market followed by craft market day. A large section of a main street is closed to traffic and many booths are set up and many many folks get out for the day. Just a lot of fun. Oceanside is also the home to the California Surfing Museum. At this time they are showing a special exhibit called "WOW - Women on Waves" and it covers the history of women in the sport of surfing. Very interesting and an excellent exhibit.

Saturday was moving day to position ourselves to see the Sunday Dodgers game. We decided we should stay on the north side of Los Angeles so that on Monday we can continue north up the coast without having to endure any of the LA crosstown freeway traffic. So we set off up I-5 into the teeth of the storm. On numerous occasions the traffic across all 3-4 lanes came to complete standstill and we sat for several minutes. Then like the pig in the python, it cleared up and away everyone went only to hit the next snarl a few miles further ahead. Oh well, that's out of the way now anyway. We stayed at an RV park, with a great pool, in Valencia meaning that we had about an hours drive back in Sunday to see the game and the same length back out afterwards.

We had great seats for the game. We were in the "top deck" directly behind home plate.

The Dodgers came out on top 5-4 with a run in the bottom of the 11th. Three players we hoped to see ended up not starting at all. Chipper Jones for the Braves did not make an appearance at all. Manny for the Dodgers caught the ceremonial first pitch by Jose Lima's son and then pitch hit, later in the game, into an easy out. His appearance sure woke up the fans. Very popular guy. You can actually buy souvenir "Manny dreadlock wigs" :-)

Russel Martin (the Canadian connection) pitch hit a single in the 11th and ended up scoring the winning run so that was quite exciting. A few rows down from us in the stands sat a young man who clearly wins the "best hair award" for our trip...

In the eighth inning break at Dodger Stadium they play "keep on believing" (by Journey) and the fans do a karaoke like singalong. There is one guy they show on the giant scoreboard who apparently is an icon at this. He was just excellent and the fans loved it. There are a bunch of samples showing the guy on youtube... click
here to see a sample. There are many more.

With the Dodgers winning, our travel series now stands at 5 wins for the home team and 2 wins for the visiting team. With 3 games to go, the visiting teams will have to kick it up a notch!

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Back to Week 8

On to Week 10

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Week 8 - Phoenix Arizona to San Diego California

Our general travel route for this week...

We've also added 45 more pics to our photo album.

Leaving Phoenix, rather than go back up through Oak Creek Canyon (even though it would normally be worth the drive), we headed north west through Wickensburg to Kingman. The drive through a Joshua Tree Forest is just another one of those spectacular desert scenery trips.

Kingman is a key spot on the historic Route 66. They have a fantastic little musuem telling the story of how Route 66 was built and the hardships that folks faced in this amazing task. The work crews didn't have the huge rock crushing, clearing equipment there is today. There are also displays showing various early crossings of Route 66. A couple of guys even roller skated it before it was all paved! Those crazy kids! We had a late afternoon lunch at Mr. D's, an historic Route 66 50's diner. They had a sign that said "You must try our milkshakes", so we did. Shake was good, hamburger... ho hum but that's ok, it was a cool place to stop for munchies. Waitresses dressed in 50's style. Pretty cute. Some other folks came in and were taking pictures all over the place. We asked our waitress how many times a day she had her picture taken. She said lots, and she said it was interesting to see the weird pictures people would take. She said that one day she was walking across their parking lot when a tourist was taking a picture of a very ordinary modern day fire hydrant. Those crazy kids! A number of old Route 66 motels still linger in Kingman.

We had planned to go north of Kingman to the Grand Canyon Skywalk then over the Hoover Dam to Las Vegas, but two things changed our mind. We were told that the drive out to the Skywalk included 9 miles of gravel road which was reported to be pretty bad washboard type driving. Definitely not recommended to take a trailer out there. The second was the potential for long delays going over the Hoover Dam. They have been working on a new bridge bypassing the dam for over 4 years. It was supposed to be finished a couple of years ago but various delays meant... not quite yet. So construction delays as well as security checks for every vehicle crossing the dam meant it could be an extra long day.

Since we have already had the pleasure of driving across the Hoover Dam, on a previous trip, along with the likelihood that both the Grand Canyon and the Skywalk would be around for a while yet, we decided to give both a miss. It seems a mystery that something like the Skywalk would be built without decent highways to get there. It almost seems like they are trying to force people into taking expensive "tours" just to get there.

Anyway, we headed west to Laughlin then north to Las Vegas as this was a new route for us. West of Kingman you drive over a mountain range into Laughlin. The climb up one side and down the other is over 12 miles each. The scenery once again eye popping.

In Las Vegas we stayed at the Oasis RV Park south of the airport just off I-15. An oasis indeed. Nice pools (2), clubhouse with bar, lots of activities, etc etc. Also very convenient to get to "the strip". We had tried to stay at another RV park, the "Las Vegas Motor Coach Resort" but were told that our wee trailer was not up to snuff for their park... "only class A motor homes allowed here"...in other words piss off... but to be fair, they were nice enough to recommend us to the Oasis RV Park along with a promotional code for 20% off our stay there, so they can't be all that bad.

The gambling in Vegas was pretty neutral, about broke even on that front. Morning coffee at Palio's in the Bellagio is always a nice way to start the day. As usual, the atrium, just off the registration area, at the Bellagio was full of flowers, displays and fabulous colours.

The rest of Las Vegas was mostly shopping, pooling and generally relaxing for a few days. We were, however, once again visited by our old nemesis "the Jackalope"... driving north onto the Las Vegas strip we drove past an old motel which has apparently closed...what's that movie?... "No country for old Jackalopes".

The MLB schedule is starting to affect our schedule. After Vegas we had planned to head to San Diego but the way the schedule was working for the Angels in Anaheim forced us to go there first instead directly from Las Vegas. The alternative would be to sit around LA and wait for the Angels to return from a road trip. Not what we wanted to do. So off to the coast it was.

A major point to remember is that this was Friday of the Memorial Day weekend. WOW... the freeway from LA to Vegas (ie going the other way from where we were going) was pretty well bumper to bumper the entire way. At one point, the traffic going towards Vegas was stopped and we passed closed to 20 miles of cars basically at a standstill. Don't get caught up in that mess!

We actually stayed in Pomona, east of LA, for a couple of nights and went to see the Angels take on the Seattle Mariners on Saturday. It was a close game with Seattle leading 1-0 into the bottom of the 8th when, to the great delight of the crowd, Bobby Abreu hit a solo home run to tie it. The game went into the 10th where the Angels put it away with a Kendry Morales walk off Grand Slam home run to win 5-1. The Angels celebration at home plate was a bit short lived when the exuberance resulted in an injury to one of their own players. The old adage... its all fun and games until someone gets hurt... came into play. We don't know exactly what happened but one of the players ended up being carted off on a gurney.

Sunday we headed to San Diego to catch a game there before the Padres went on a road trip. A relatively uneventful short drive with lots of traffic and not a lot to see on the inland freeway. We stayed at the KOA in Chula Vista just south of San Diego. Again not something to do on a Memorial Day weekend. The place was absolutely packed (good thing we had a reservation) and pandamonium reigned. Honestly, it was like driving through a packed playground with zero supervision for the children. At one point while backing up our car, checked mirrors etc, started to back up when a kid on a little pedal cart whizzed around the corner across behind our car. Our trailer hitch could not have been any more than a couple of inches from that kid's head. He was just lucky we had not started moving as there was no place for him to go to veer away from the car. After complaining about the lack of supervision or responsibility being taken by these kids parents, or the KOA, we were told that the KOA just rented the carts out, they didn't tell the kids how to drive them. No safety equipment, nothing and these carts were no more than a couple of feet off the ground at best and very fast moving... other than a very small piece of flag stuck up the back they are virtually invisible below the vision line of our vehicle let alone most of the big RV's moving through the park. Perhaps the KOA was doing their part to aid in the draining of the shallow end of the gene pool. On Sunday afternoon, this place was like a serious accident waiting to happen. It seemed that none of these kids were in danger of being abducted since no one would want to take them.

We decided to drive into downtown San Diego and take in their waterfront. FORGET IT on a holiday weekend Sunday, huge crowds and small parking lots. Like every place else on the planet the best course of action on a holiday weekend is to hunker down and wait it out. We went back to the KOA, tried not to drive over some kid, cooked up some burgers and watched a few episodes of Babylon 5... almost finished Season 5.

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Back to Week 7

On to Week 9

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