We’ve just settled in to a relatively empty piece of desert south of Ajo Arizona after a couple of weeks of overload at the Rubber Tramp Redezvous in Quartzsite. For the past year we’ve been travelling around, mostly by ourselves. We spent a couple of weeks with Jim and Julie back in February, then some time caravaning with Chris and Michal through New Mexico in March, then a month with Jim and Julie again in July before meeting up with Matthew and Nancy in September. Beyond those encounters though, this has been a time spent mostly with just ourselves. The last two weeks at RTR were nothing like that. Not only was it Quartzsite during its busiest time of the year, but there were all these interesting new people to spend time with.

We initially read about RTR last January when were were new to the road and spending our time in south Florida. I remember thinking at the time that it looked like fun and that it would be nice to be out there in the desert when the event rolled around again in 2012. Despite all our unplanned adventures, or maybe because of them, that worked out.

The Rubber Tramp Redezvous is an annual event and this year marked only its second happening. The group of people involved however, have a much longer history. The genesis of the group started with a Yahoo group centered around living in vans, VanDwellers as they say. That group still exists but has spread out onto a forum hosted at CheapRVLiving. We found out about the group through Jenn and Johnny of HitekHomeless, a couple of former technology geeks who before us escaped their cubes and hit the road. Well before we had departed on our own adventure, their blog was one of the ones that provided us with inspiration.

Jenn and Johnny were attending again this year and since we had recently been working on a side project together we thought it would be a good opportunity to meet in person. We also were interested in the event itself and despite being nervous about our acceptance in a group of people centered around living in vans we were determined to give it a shot. We shouldn’t have worried, the group is open to all sorts of road dwellers, full time or not, in vans or cars or trailers or class Cs or even a giant beast like Horton. And really, despite the differences in living accommodations, many of the challenges remain the same and the solutions are applicable across vehicles, they just differ in scale.

The group was set up in a large open portion of the Dome Rock BLM camping area. Most of the crowd was clustered together, but knowing that many had solar and we had our generator we set ourselves up a bit further away so that we could run our generator without causing anyone any issues. That turned out to be a good decision for all I think, as we definitely didn’t bother anyone and we were free to fire up to charge batteries or heat dinner without feeling any guilt or stress. Our location did however set us apart from the group and I regretted that a bit.

The gathering also coincided with the annual Quartzsite Rock and Gem and Big Tent RV show. During that event the population of Quartzsite swells to some insane number and the campgrounds and BLM land fill with people in all sorts of living arrangements. We drove up from Yuma so we had to come through the large LTVA areas south of town as well as driving through the middle of the madness itself. One look was all that Christine needed, once we were set up she declared herself content and refused to go back in to town! I ventured in a few times during our stay, once before the big show started and then a couple more times after. What was it like? Madness. People, people and more people. Lots of traffic. Amazing piles of things I can’t believe anyone buys. More rocks than I ever thought to see, vendors hawking all the latest kitchen gadgets, it was crazy. I had fun….sorta

The star of the show though was of course RTR. There were morning and evening walks where folks with and without dogs took long strolls through the desert. Not only were these good for getting to know the other walkers they also provided a reason to get me out and walking in the morning, something that has lapsed since we lost the boys. Most mornings at 10 there would be a presentation on some aspect of living on the road. Whether it was solar (which we missed, bah!), cooking, water conservation, workamping or visiting Mexico for inexpensive services or just fun. All were interesting and certainly not limited in application to van dwelling. I particularly enjoyed the sessions on cooking and water conservation and the report on travelling to Mexico (particularly Baha). I think we picked up a few tricks on the water side that should allow us to extend our stays beyond the two weeks that we’ve been managing up to this point. There were nightly and sometimes morning campfires, community meals and even a tiki bar hosted by our new friend Kirk. Kirk had solar and wind powered everything and that LED lit palm tree above his bar was a beacon to Christine and I.

The event is about the people, both long time online acquaintances getting to see each other in person as well as lots of new attendees like ourselves. We made many new friends and met many interesting people with all sorts of  back stories. Some we’re similar stories to our own but definitely not everyone. It was a lot of fun, overload or not, as testified by our planned week long stay that went double that. We’re not sure what the next year will bring to us but we hope it will include the opportunity to be in Quartzsite once again for RTR 2013.

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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!

We also made it over to Paul and Nina’s one night for a fabulous dinner and time to sit and talk and get to know each other in a format other than blog posts and twitter feeds. We also ventured out to the coast one day when high surf was predicted to see if we could watch some surfers.

Beyond that, well, like we said, it was pretty quiet. We finally pulled up stakes on the 13th, Christine’s second birthday celebrated on the road. We still don’t know next steps on Christine’s health, so while we wait for some appointments to get set up we decided to head back into the desert. Next up, Quartzsite and the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous!

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Well, the last post left off with us packing up in Anza-Borrego and heading into San Diego. There was a little background missing from that post however. You see, part of the reason we had spent so much time back in Joshua Tree was because Christine had been making some trips into Rancho Mirage to see a cardiologist. She had been experiencing increasing shortness of breath and a rapid pulse, beginning on uphill hikes and progressing to happening even on a short walk around Horton. So, we were going through the somewhat long process of testing first driving in from Joshua Tree and then driving in from our spot in Anza-Borrego. We had decided that we wanted some more information and so made a trip into San Diego on Friday to see an internal medicine doctor. He was concerned enough to refer us to another cardiologist and send us over to the hospital at 4 0′clock on the Friday before Christmas to get an echocardiogram.

We rushed over through San Diego traffic to get to the hospital before they shut down and got the test done. The cardiologist called Christine immediately after the test, which didn’t show any problems, to give her some details, schedule a angiogram and pass along his cell phone number. Cell phone…really? That made two doctors in a couple of hours who had given us a cell phone number to call them on. In our experience, a pretty unheard of scenario.

We made the trip back to the desert with the intention of moving in to the San Diego area Saturday morning so that we could be closer in for an appointment with the cardiologist on Monday and the angiogram on Tuesday. Things didn’t go quite like we planned. We did manage to make it in to a San Diego area park but from there we went straight into the hospital to get Christine admitted. Her symptoms had really started to go downhill and just walking from the front to the back of Horton while we were pulling out of our spot was enough to put her in a lot of distress. Thus began our five days of sun and no fun in San Diego (though to be fair we might just call it six cause that Friday of appointments and hospital visits wasn’t much fun either!)

The next four days would be a haze of fear and fatigue with the occasional humorous and frequently disgusting moments provided by Christine’s various hospital roomates thrown in. After we got settled in our first room the doctors and nurses descended. It was at this point that we learned our first lesson.

Lesson 1: Brent is a wuss! (Especially when it comes to needles)

You see, I knew that whenever I gave blood I had a tendency to fade to black. I had always assumed that my reaction was due to the loss of blood, not the sight of a needle rooting around inside my arm seeking blood. Standing by Christine’s bed watching first the blood sucker pulling vials and then another nurse root around trying to get an IV in it became clear what the real problem was. Luckily, despite the full sweat, fading vision and loss of hearing I managed to make it to the foot of C’s bed before I hit the floor!

Christine was later hauled off for some more testing while I worked on trying to get her into a room with no roommate. All the rooms, except for the isolation rooms, had two beds so any respite was likely to be temporary but anything to get away from the alarm on her current roommate’s sleep apnea machine.

Lesson 2: C is grumpy and mean in hospitals!

Once we got moved into the new room C settled down to sleep and I crawled in to the tiny hospital bed to keep her company. She subsequently kicked me out indicating that sleeping with 8 wires coming off her body was bad enough without having to share her scant space with me! Second lesson learned.

Christmas day and Monday were for the most part just waiting days. All the tests that Christine had had up to this point had shown a healthy heart and lungs and no visible blood clots. That left the doctors thinking it was most likely going to be Primary Pulmonary Hypertension, a condition with grim outcomes. Her angiogram was scheduled for Tuesday morning and would definitively determine whether it was PPH or not. In those two days of waiting we learned several new things.

Lesson 3: Brent is a weepy little bitch!

Faced with the doctors high percentage assessment that we were looking at PPH I found out what its like to fully consider the loss of the person you love most in this world. It is simply terrifying.

Lesson 4: Hospital food is every bit as bad as you hear it is

Between Christine and I there was a close race between what was the worst meal there. I tended to think it was the meatloaf with the gelatinous, slightly opaque brown gravy sitting there jiggling on top of it. Christine, who actually had to eat this stuff and not just taste it like I did, went for the chicken salad with some weird orange substance in it. There was one pretty good meal for Christmas lunch, turkey and dressing, as well as some pretty decent salads and good fresh fruit. The rest was bagged rolls, bagged apple slices, soft overcooked vegetables, tepid water for tea, lemonade served in a container that too closely resembled a urine specimen cup and sad little plates of egg whites. None of that was helped by the total absence of salt since they had her on a cardiac diet.

Lesson 5: Hospital roommates are…undesirable

Christine went through three before we lucked out and got moved into isolation. It’s a hospital, so of course, everyone is sick and everyone is going through something, so sympathy and compassion are certainly called for. All that doesn’t mean that you want to share a room with them however. Two of the roommates were brief. The first was an old lady with sleep apnea. She herself was perfectly pleasant but her machine was LOUD. There was the constant sound of air as it blew air at her which was one thing but when she would stop breathing it would set off a loud alarm that was maybe three feet from Christine’s head, not so nice.

Then there was the lady that neither of us actually saw. She arrived somewhere around 3 AM Tuesday morning and immediately set to yelling at the nurses for her pain medication. That went on for some unknown period of time before she got up and apparently just walked on out of the hospital.

The roommate that Christine had for the longest period was an old lady, we’ll call Kitty, suffering from diabetes and kidney failure who could no longer get up and move around on her own. Keep in mind these rooms are pretty darn small, Christine was against the outside wall in both which was definitely the better bed to have since it gave her some measure of privacy and a view out the window. Going in and out of the room as well as going over to the bathroom required you to walk past the other bed in the room, so that person had much less privacy. So, we were lucky. But, the area was small and the curtain between the two beds was probably not much more than two feet away from Christine.

Kitty was an interesting creature. She was alternately mean and then creepily nice to the nurses. The nurses by the way, were saints. Kitty was never happy with her meals and would whine and complain to the nurses until she got something that she wanted. She needed to go to the bathroom frequently and required help to do so, sometimes she didn’t make it. So the nurses were doing what nurses do, helping her out as best they could, moving her or cleaning her up but that didn’t stop her from snapping at them. Like I said, she was very sick and we both definitely felt sympathy for her, but still, having some of that going on few feet away was less than pleasant.

Kitty was also a little funny though. She didn’t like the leads to her heart monitor and so was constantly pulling them off. This was less funny in the middle of the night when her activity resulted in nurses constantly coming in and out to put them back on but during the day when we could hear the tearing sound of them being removed and see them plop down on to the floor mere minutes after a nurse had put them back on her, well, that was what we had for entertainment.

Kitty’s most memorable moment and the origin of her nickname was when she had one of her flips from mean to nice. She had just finished snapping at one of the nurses and was whining about wanting a back rub to another when a new nurse came on shift. This nurse was in the process of giving her her back rub when in a creepy little voice she called out….”Kitty likes that!”. We just sat on the other side of our little curtain and giggled.

Lesson 6: Having MRSA history can be a positive thing

The morning of the angiogram we had a new nurse come on that noticed that Christine had a MRSA infection several years ago. This had been noted the first night but since it was so long ago no one was worried about it. Our new nurse and hero Tracy knew that despite the time period protocol required Christine to be in isolation. From then on getting in and out of the room was a bit more of a pain for everyone but guess what, no more roommates for Christine! We spent the day of the test on our own and that night got moved into an isolation room where I even got a cot and was able to just spend the night there.

Relief

Happily for us all, Christine’s angiogram results came back negative for PPH!!! Relief and happy tears all around (and an I told you so! from Christine). We spent the rest of Tuesday and most of Wednesday recovering from the procedure (lots of pain and subsequent exhaustion for C), meeting with the doctors including one new one and trying out a new med to alleviate some of her symptoms. Tuesday night we celebrated with pizza smuggled in to the cardiac ward (doctor ordered her to increase sodium intake so hey…I was just following orders!) and Christine was finally able to get some decent (for a hospital) sleep. Late Wednesday afternoon they turned us loose since with the elimination of PPH the doctor felt she was no longer in a sudden death scenario.

Christines symptoms persist and we’ve still got work ahead of us to try and determine what’s going on but we’re ecstatic to have PPH ruled out and to be home in Horton. We’ll spend at least another couple of weeks here in San Diego meeting with her doctors before determining what our next steps will be.

Oh, really can’t say enough for our experience with Dr. Brunsting and Dr. Phillips, they are incredible. Also, the nurses at Scripps Mercy were super compassionate and caring during our entire stay, amazing people doing an extremely difficult job.

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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.

During the errands though we noticed a couple of things. One, there was a chance of snow in the mountains that we needed to cross to get back to Horton. Two, there was another brewery just down the road that we thought might just pick up our mood. We found Lost Abbey on Google Maps so we didn’t even check to see if they were open before heading on over. When we arrived at the warehouse, the door was open and there were no hours posted so we headed on in and found the bar. After standing for a bit a guy on a forklift stopped, informed us they were closed but said he would be happy to pour us a beer. We chatted him up a bit and got our brews before he jumped back on the forklift and went to work. It wasn’t until 10 minutes later that we noticed that the picture of the brewery’s head brewer posted behind the bar bore a striking resemblance to our savior on the forklift. Cool! We hung around a bit watching people work while we sipped our beer before heading back over the mountains to Horton, properly cheered up from our otherwise uncheery visit.

After two nights we bailed out of our RV park and staked out a prime boondocking spot overlooking the Carrizo Badlands. We scoped it out during the drive into San Diego, ensuring one, that we could get Horton down the single track dirt road that led to it and two that we would be able to pull a decent Verizon signal from the spot. Everything worked out as planned and we parked with a private view out over the badlands and Canyon Sin Nombre.

While in our location we had great sunrises and sunsets. We had snow on the mountains behind us, were buzzed by Navy helicopters working their nap-of-the-earth skills, including a double formation at night, we both got a little work done and in general just enjoyed the peace and quiet.

We also made another trip into San Diego to meet up with new friends Maria and Brian from The Roaming Pint. We had a good afternoon getting to know them as well as sampling another area brewery, Coronado Brewing Company.

We bailed out of our spot on Christmas Eve and headed on in to San Diego.

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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.

Its not hard to figure out what we like here. We spent the previous three weeks struggling down the California coast trying to find available and affordable campgrounds and this place is free. We spent the previous two months moving, frequently, this location allows us to relax and sit still for a while. Not since we left the Bozeman area back in July have we been so completely isolated and it’s a grand feeling to open the windows in the morning, step out the door for a walk or spend the day sitting in the sun reading and not see another person. There is a family of coyotes living near by that we see frequently. There are jackrabbits bounding about during our walks. There are hummingbirds buzzing by feeding on the flowering shrubs. Almost exclusively sunny and warm weather, endless blue skies and bright stars at night. What’s not to like?

Despite all that, I THINK we’re going to finally pull out tomorrow and move down to Anza-Borego State Park for what should be a similar experience in a different location. Its been a good time here though. We spent a little time in Joshua Tree driving through and admiring the scenery. C hasn’t been feeling up to hiking so just a short visit really. Our good friend Greg was strangely spending two days working at a motorcycle track 25 miles down the road from us and so was able to become the second official guest in Horton for a couple of nights. We made several trips into the Indio, Thousand Palms, Rancho Mirage area for shopping and an afternoon movie. We satisfied our curiosity about what LA looks like up close. We’ve veg’d out and had Breaking Bad and The Wire marathons. We’ve rolled through several books and we’ve discovered that we can get by boondocking while working (yes, C has been doing some work, Sugar Mama!).

Great quiet times!

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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.

We hadn’t managed to get in touch with Greg for a meet up the next day so with our checkout deadline staring us in the face we decided to brave Friday afternoon LA traffic and head on over towards Joshua Tree. The trip from SLO to some BLM land just outside the entrance to Joshua Tree was over 300 miles away, a much further drive than we tend to do normally. Add to the distance the fun of skirting through Los Angeles area traffic and we knew it was gonna be a long day.

We had read on a few forums that some people recommend getting up in the middle of the night to tackle LA so we gave that some consideration. In California you can park in a rest stop for 8 hours so we figured we could pick one on the way down, stop until 10 PM or so, drive through to the other side to another rest stop and get some sleep. After watching traffic maps for a couple of days we decided that wasn’t really necessary, there were little groups of red, lots of yellow but really, it didn’t look that bad. In reality, it kinda was.

In some ways we were right, the amount of full on stop and go, red, traffic was not all that much. Sure we had slow downs, and yes we stopped a few times but it wasn’t like being stuck on an Atlanta Interstate during rush hour after an accident. The problem though is that the traffic, even when moving, is crazy heavy. People everywhere, coming on, coming off, constantly boxed in by cars and semis. The lanes are super narrow and the on ramps are nearly non-existent. The kicker though, is that it goes on FOREVER. Seriously, from well outside the city until we got all the way over and back on to 10, probably 100 miles or so, it was non stop heavy traffic. No rest stops, no where to pull over and take a breather, constant.

Once we finally got clear and on to I-10 it was pretty smooth sailing traffic wise. Then the wind kicked in! Luckily the lanes were wider but man, did it start to blow. When we got to Thousand Palms, 60 miles or so from our planned stop, we saw a sign for a Flying J and decided it was time to call it quits. The bad side of the Flying J stop was that they didn’t have RV parking away from the semis so it wasn’t a noisy and not really restful night. The good side was that we found we were only a few miles away from Paul and Nina over at WheelingIt. We’ve been following Nina’s blog since early on in our trip and while we were close to them in Oregon we hadn’t yet managed to cross paths. C was still feeling bad so only I got to go visit but had a great time spending a couple of hours getting to know each other in person. Hoping we’ll get to meet up again later on!

The next morning, we fueled up, topped off the propane and took a short trip down the road to find a place to park in the desert.

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.

We kept the week intentionally pretty quiet. We took one day and toured south down Highway 1, second best drive of the trip behind Icefields Parkway in Alberta. We visited the local farmer’s market, scoring fresh picked chard, heirloom tomatoes, interesting potatoes and trying guava for the first time. Visited Monterey and Carmel-By-The-Sea. Carmel had an amazing beach with dogs running everywhere and Pebble Beach visible just to the north. We cooked good meals, read books, veg’d out in front of the TV and in general just enjoyed not moving for a bit. We were constantly amazed an entertained looking around us at all the productive fields. Some fields turned over to dark rich soil, some filled with strawberries, artichokes, brussels sprouts and other items we could only guess at. Some fields were even being actively worked by incredible numbers of manual laborers.

At the end of a week we considered doing one more but ended up forcing ourselves to move a little further down the road to San Luis Obispo.

This is a sea lion colony we discovered during our drive down Highway 1

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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!

Once we made it into town we headed down the waterfront until we hit the heavy tourist area down at the end, that’s when the fun started. After looking up public transit directions and seeing that we were ~5 miles and a 50 minute bus ride away from the pub where we were meeting Paul we decided just to walk over instead. We took the scenic route and tried to make a few turns to avoid the worst of the hills, unsuccessfully, so we figure it was around a 6 mile walk by the time we got there. Had a great time and got to see so much more of the city than we would have riding the bus.

We had a great evening catching up with Paul. First we went to Magnolia Pub for some in house made brews and delicious food. After that we rolled down to one of Paul’s local hangouts the Golden Cane. We stayed too long to make it back on the ferry so Paul guided us to the Muni line and then impressively using Google Maps in less than sharp mental condition I got us off at the right stop and onto the Golden Gate line to make it back out to San Rafael. I was kinda proud

The next day we relaxed a bit in Horton before heading over to explore the Marin Headlands. Made a stop into the Marine Mammal Center, a very nice organization that takes in injured marine mammals, mostly California Sea Lions, and rehabilitates them before putting them back into the wild. After the visit we drove further into the headlands watching surfers for a while before climbing up to views of the Golden Gate and the bay and city beyond.

That night my cousin Jennifer and her husband Evan came by the glamourous digs of Marin RV Park before driving us across the bay to Berkley to enjoy some Ethiopian food, a first for us. We had a great time catching up and getting to know each other while casually scooping a delicious assortment of meats and veggies up with injera. We topped that off with some gelato back in San Rafael. Unfortunately, I neglected to take any pictures so you’ll just have to use your imagination for the food and the participants.

The next morning we relaxed and took our time while we once again waited for bay area traffic to ease up before risking the roads. Once we were clear we hooked up and pulled out heading around the bay and a little further south.

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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

We had some great food in Santa Rosa – the best being a Puerto Rican restaurant. Mmmmmmm so good. We first noticed the place while walking through downtown gazing at mostly empty restaurants, El Coqui was packed. So, when we were back a day or two later standing around at Russian River with a large crowd we knew where we wanted to go for food. Also had good Venezuelan and Indian. Unfortunately, we also had the worst burgers ever in Santa Rosa. They had no taste at all. When you can taste the bread and that is it – you know you have one sucky burger. On the beer side, we stopped by Russian River and the 2 beers we had were pretty stellar. Surprisingly we hadn’t heard of this brewery before but after seeing it we looked it up on BeerAdvocate and saw nothing but As and Bs so we had to work it in.

The best part of our Santa Rosa visit was our tour over at Hendry. We can’t say enough good things about it. Our tour lasted nearly 3 hrs and was led by the owner George.  George had been living and working on the ranch since the 40s and was personally responsible for moving it from a ranch with agriculture and livestock to 100% dedicated vineyards. With that personal experience George made the tour educational and informative. We learned so much about wine – from growing to producing to tasting and food pairings. If you are in the area and want to learn about wine this is the tour to go on. From speaking with other folks attending, they commented as well that from all the tours/tastings they were on this was by far the best. O-U-T-S-T-A-N-D-I-N-G

Next up San Francisco to catch up with friends and family!

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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!

After our curvy drive, we arrived at Panther Flat (National Forest Campground) and were happy to see that the campground was nearly empty, had spots that could fit us, and was beautiful. Not so happy to see it was $15. Those are CANADA prices! Yeoch. We signed up for 1 night so we could explore the North side of Redwood National Park.

While there, we took a scenic drive through the Redwoods as well as took a stroll into the Stout grove. Redwoods are breathtaking. There is no way to describe seeing them that can truly capture how magnificent they are.  If you ever get a chance to see a grove – one word – GO! Stout grove in particular just had a special atmosphere, amazing, peaceful place.

Not so magnificent is Crescent City, CA. I’m sure there is a hidden gem in there somewhere…. and it looks like they are trying to revitalize the city a bit… but glad we just passed on by.

From Panther Flat we headed toward Klamath so we could check out the South side of the Nat’l Park. From perusing our campground options, decided that we’d hit up an RV park since we could get 50% off using our Passport America membership. $15 for full hook-ups is “alright alright alright” (Wooderson – Dazed and Confused.) Chinook RV park caught our eye on the drive by and decided to make that our home for the next few days. Ended up with a great spot  right on the river with no one beside us. Add to that that the folks are super super super friendly and every night a fire is made at the community fire pit overlooking the water. Pretty nice.

Our stop in Klamath ended up with some notable events.

1) Our luck with closed roads followed us… we hit not 1, not 2, but 3 closed roads in the park. All the roads are damaged for a variety of reasons and who knows when they will open again – if ever. Knowing CA anything is possible. Heck, they might just slap an I-80 sign on them and call ‘em good.

2) On our way to closed road #1 we came upon an accident. An older fellow, Lynn, was biking and took a curve too fast and had a pretty nasty spill. Thankfully he was wearing a helmut. While his noggin was fine, his leg/hip was not. He couldn’t move it. Another driver, Will, had come upon the scene just a few minutes before we did. We wanted to call for an ambulance, but Lynn wanted to try and wait and see if he could move or at least get to Will’s car who had offered to drive him to the hospital. While not a funny event, some amusing bits of conversation transpired.

Will: Where are you all from?

B: Georgia

Will: Where?

C: Georgia.

Will: I don’t know where that is.

C: A long way away.

Lynn: Are you deaf? They said Georgia.

C: Must be that southern draaaawl.

We found out that Will was moving to Oregon from Chicago and had just met his Dad for the first time earlier in the day. Lynn had just come back from backpacking in Yellowstone and the Tetons.

A bit later when we finally convinced Lynn he needed an ambulance to get to the hospital, we offered to run down to his house which was just down the road to pick up some items for the hospital ….

Will: Do you uh have anything in your day pack like uh pot or anything you might want them to take out?

Lynn: Ahh No. No.

B and C: <giggle>

Shortly thereafter, exactly what Lynn was trying to avoid happened. Police, fire truck, 2nd fire vehicle, and ambulance showed up. Lynn was worried about money. He knew he needed to go to the hospital but had hoped to get there on his own. We left Lynn with our phone number in case he needed help getting back home, but haven’t heard from him. Hopefully he is doing ok.

3) Kayaking is redeemed! Had a great time kayaking on the Klamath River which we took all the way to the Pacific. We saw 2 bald eagles, lots of other birds – Pelicans, Seagulls, Ducks, Anhigas or Cormorants, Herons, others we don’t know, and a ton of seals or sea lions. On our way up we were surrounded by them. We also determined that I am lazy – for the first time in our tandem kayak I was paddling up front. We think the front seat is the culprit for laziness. Then the other day, Sean who works here at Chinook, let us borrow some of his fishing kayaks (hard-sided with pedals and a  rudder!) – man those things are FAST! We were blown away by how easy it was to maneuver and how fast you can go. Freakin’ awesome!

4) We saw a family of otters on the river while sitting by the fire. They swam around playing and then got up on the dock and boats and continued their antics. We didn’t see any green glowing eyes though… of course we also didn’t have a flashlight shining on them but I wonder.

5) Klamath may be home to the friendliest folks ever. While watching sunset up on an overlook we met a trio of fellows who had also headed up there on their way to dinner. We got to chatting. Everyone is amazed to hear we hail from Georgia. Tickles people I guess. One guy’s son lives in Dallas, GA. As the conversation continued we heard of stories about the great fishing around here, saw some pictures, and on their way out they said hold on a minute. The gave us not 1 but 2 jars of salmon they had caught and canned. And then yesterday, Sean gave us a huge salmon fillet from a fish he caught. It is huge!

All in all, we had a unexpectedly good time in Klamath. We like good surprises! Hope we have more to come as we venture down south on 101.

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