Horton's Travels

December 29 – January 13, 2012

So the rest of the stay in San Diego was thankfully less dramatic than the first five days. Once we got back home to Horton we settled in to rest up and recuperate from the hospital stay. It was a pretty quiet two weeks, we both caught up on sleep, got out for some short walks to measure Christine’s progress, did some research and even, gasp, got some work done. Yeah, that’s right…both of us…working!

We did manage to have some excitement though. Paul and Nina (aka WheelingIt) were in town and invited us along to a New Years Eve celebration they had scheduled with some other travelers who also happened to be in town. As a result we were able to meet RV travelers Bree and Matt (Operation Tally-Ho) and Yair and Ayo (Our Take on Freedom) as well as their friends Ruthie and Mel. Bree was the planner for the night and started us out with sushi at their favorite spot in San Diego. Then she stepped it up a notch and unveiled a scavenger hunt that she had put together, coordinated with a cool mobile app. We broke up into teams and took off around town looking for mechanical bulls, bald women, dead people (or their outlines), that sort of thing. Once we found an item, simply take a picture on your phone and upload. From within the app you could see your progress measured against the other teams, pretty cool. We all met back up afterwards to compare scores and ring in the new year. We had a great time…thanks Bree! continue reading…

December 13 – 24, 2011

We left the Joshua Tree area and headed southwest towards Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. Yep, we thought we would be heading further east, over to Arizona weeks ago but here we were, moving west again. First stop was into an RV park for a couple of nights. We had tanks to empty, tanks to fill, laundry to wash and needed to make a trip to the San Diego suburbs to pick up a package that could only be delivered Fed Ex.

Our first day into San Diego was, well, unlike what we had been led to expect from San Diego. It was cold, very cold in the mountains going in, and very, very wet. We made our required package pick up before heading over to Stone Brewery for lunch. We ate in the brewery’s restaurant and enjoyed a beer. Christine enjoyed her food, mine was far less than stellar and overall the place was a little too fancy and pricey for us. The beer was fine, honestly though, outside of a couple of their brews, we aren’t huge Stone fans. We were a little bummed out so skipped on the tour and headed out for a few more errands. continue reading…

November 19 – December 11, 2011

Today marks the beginning of our fourth week in the Colorado Desert just outside the southern entrance to Joshua Tree National Park. We arrived here three weeks ago intending to stay through the Thanksgiving day crowding of the parks before moving on towards Arizona. Somehow, those few days turned into the last three weeks. We’ve moved Horton twice, once to go get water and a second time with the intent of moving on but ended up getting water once again and coming right back to our spot. I guess something about it just keeps pulling us back. continue reading…

November 16 – 19, 2011

After leaving the Monterey area our plan was to make the drive down to San Luis Obispo where we would stay for a few days, long enough to see the town, visit the coast and to arrange a trip down to Ventura to visit our friend Greg. Before we left C spent a lot of effort looking around the area trying to find a good campground that wasn’t ridiculously expensive and we had settled on El Chorro Regional Park. Their website listed that they had some walk in sites and that there was plenty of availability. The truth however, was not so sunny. Once we got there we found that while there were lots of open spots, of the reduced set that would fit Horton every single one of them had incoming reservations. Bummer!

We got set up in one that we could have for a couple of nights and settled in until we started hearing noise from the softball fields near by. Wandered down there in the dark and hung around watching a couple of different rec games being played. The next morning we drove down to Morro Bay and got to watch a group of otters playing in the waters just off shore. C was feeling a bit under the weather so she rested up for the rest of the day while I ran into SLO for some errands. While I was there I saw that their weekly farmer’s market was being set up so I hung around to browse through that a bit before leaving. Seemed to be quite the event there, lots of fresh produce like you would expect but also a ton of food stalls, several with large portable wood fire grills set up. Pretty impressive market and liked what I saw of the downtown. Hope to stay a bit longer next time. continue reading…

November 9 – 16, 2011

By the morning that we pulled out of Marin RV Park near San Francisco both C and I were feeling a bit ragged. Lately, our pace of travel has been pretty rapid, moving through Oregon and down through northern California in the space of just a few weeks. Travelling and moving to see new places is one of the most exciting parts of this journey but we’ve both discovered that if those moves come too frequently over an extended period it can start to wear on you. Adding to that is the relatively difficult task of finding places to stay in California that meet our desired budget, resulting in C spending much of our time in each location struggling to find where we can stay next. So, we took a drive around the east side of the bay and headed down to a little spot between Santa Cruz and Monterey. Once we arrived, saw that it was quiet, had good Internet and even HD cable for watching the weekend games, it was a done deal that we would spend a little extra time here.

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November 7 – 9, 2011

After our stay in Santa Rosa we set up ourselves for a lightning visit to San Francisco. We found a little RV park in San Rafael that was walking distance both from the ferry and a bus line into the city. We had three main objectives, tour around San Francisco a little, meet up with our friend Paul (moved out from Atlanta 6 years ago) and finally to connect with my cousin Jennifer whom I probably haven’t seen for at least 25 years.

We made the drive down from Santa Rosa mid morning after giving traffic time to die down a bit. Turned out to not be much trouble, just a few narrow construction lanes along the way. After getting set up in what was the tightest little RV park we’ve ever been in we headed out to catch an afternoon ferry into San Francisco. Quite the different experience from the ferry we rode in Washington. This ferry was much smaller and the ferry terminal was likewise a much smaller and less polished building. It didn’t end there though. Riding the ferry in Washington was a very slow, sedate ride through the sound. The beginning of the ride to San Francisco started out the same way and we thought that was all there would be but then we felt the power kick in. The twin motors started throwing up some significant rooster tails and we had to stay in the back sheltered from the wind. Pretty fun! continue reading…

November 3 – 7, 2011

After leaving Klamath we stopped near Piercy, CA. Why Piercy? They do have the famous one log house <snort> but really we stopped so we could drive over to 1 and see the coast. Our plan ended up being a bust. While we did get to the coast, the drive on 1 was nuts. By the time we reached the coast after 22+ miles of crazy curves we were a bit green and then the clouds came in and it started to rain so we didn’t even get to experience the sunset. Not wanting to drive back the way we came we found a slightly less curvy road to get home. Was about 40 miles longer to get back but well worth it.

The next day we headed for Santa Rosa where we could stay at the fairgrounds for a reasonable price and tour the area (Napa and Sonoma) and stock up on stuff at Costco. Costco and California are evil. Alcohol in California Costcos is amazing due to 1) selection of liquor and 2) great prices which leads to buying a lot The best part of the visit was as we were rolling out of the store (late on a Friday afternoon) and the receipt checker upon spying our haul grabbed a coupon book (for booze) did a little dance for us and sang out “calling all captains” (we had a bottle of Captain Morgan). He was a happy guy and made our day continue reading…

October 30 – November 3, 2011

In looking up our planned route to reach CA and the coast, the shortest route was to take 199. 199 per the California DOT is not recommended for RVs longer than 40′. B and I looked at one another after seeing this and went Hmmmmm. In the Spring when we were in CA we had a couple of very – uh – interesting roads that we took that also had the not recommended for RVs over 40′ designation. Those 2 roads (190 – our route out of Death Valley and 155 – our route out of Kernville) we’d vowed to never, ever, ever drive on again. We zoomed in Google Maps to see just how curvy 199 looked. Didn’t look tooooo bad. We read comments on RV forums. Take it slow and you’ll be just fine is what folks said.

<drumroll> The folks were right. 199, while it had a couple of interesting moments, was fine. Well fine with B at the wheel. If it had been me I think Horton would have had some body damage. We both agreed that 199 was not nearly as bad as the others. Phew! continue reading…